Huobstrasse 8, 8808 Pfaeffikon, Switzerland

CRYOTHERAPY DEVICE

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The invention concerns a device for practising whole body cryotherapy as defined in claim 1. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Whole body cryotherapy (WBC) is a medical, cosmetic and wellness treatment. Specifically, WBC forms an alternative to cold water immersion or ice packs. This treatment involves exposing individuals to extremely cold dry air (below -100 °C) for two to four minutes. Typically, WBC requires the person to be treated, to enter a room or chamber filled with air at the desired temperature and stay there for the duration of the treatment. To achieve the subzero temperatures required for WBC, two methods are typically used: liquid nitrogen and refrigerated cold air. In both cases, cold air is produced outside of the treatment chamber and then conducted into the treatment chamber.

A major disadvantage of current WBC is the operational inefficiency, unnecessary large size and cost of production. The internal volume of current WBC chambers is much larger than required without obtaining any patients benefit. Also, the prior art treatment chambers are basically conventional rooms, and though they are provided with thermal insulation to reduce the ingress of warm air etc, they still lose much energy required to keep these relatively large rooms at treatment temperature. They also use pertinent amounts of cold air to cool what is basically wasted space, especially in the comers of the room. This prior art approach is further very expensive in terms of building and construction costs: Large multi chamber facilities cost around 250k EUR and more; current single chamber facilities still cost 50k EUR and up. The use of liquid nitrogen has several disadvantages. Handling liquid nitrogen is dangerous, involving the possibility of spills which may cause harm. Liquid nitrogen is also fairly expensive, leading to increased operational expenditure. The special equipment needed to handle liquid nitrogen safely, adds to the high cost of this cooling method. Also, the thermal exposure via liquid nitrogen is not as efficient and consistent as with refrigerated cold air.

The use of refrigerated cold air avoids many of the disadvantages involved in liquid nitrogen cooling. Cold air at the desired treatment temperature can be produced relatively cheaply by electrically driven cooling processes. Suitable equipment is e. g. provided by Zimmer Medizin Systeme, Germany.

Partial Body Cryotherapy (PBC) devices or 'cryosaunas' are cylindrical chambers, typically having an aperture at the top, with the patient's head remaining outside and not subjected to the cold stimulus. These devices are commonly used throughout the United States and are sometimes erroneously referred to as offering Whole Body Cryotherapy. A further key difference between PBC and WBC is the usage of injection of evaporated liquid nitrogen into the PBC chamber with potential risk of inert gas asphyxiation as well as frostbite. GENERAL CONCEPT OF THE INVENTION

Against this background, it is an important objective of the invention to create an improved device for WBC which avoids the above disadvantages.

More specifically, objectives of the instant invention include:

Creating smaller and more economic treatment chambers

Enabling simple and quick installation

Reducing material and production costs

Reducing operational energy consumption

Creating a modular system, especially using standardized treatment chambers with add-on features

These and other objectives are attained by the feature combination of the attached independent patent claim.

Advantageous further developments and preferred embodiments of the invention are defined in the attached dependent patent claims and additionally notable from the instant description. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

A major aspect of the invention involves full or at least part separate storage and recycling of the cold air that is used in the treatment chamber. In conventional WBC devices, cold air is lost e. g. when an individual enters or leaves the treatment chamber. This lost air must be replaced with fresh cold air, which causes a waste of cooling energy., be it energy spent on liquifying nitrogen or energy used for direct cooling of treatment air, e. g in electrical air cooling devices.

The invention supplies cold air (e.g., at -110 °C) into the treatment chamber only when an individual is in the treatment chamber, and removes it again for storage, before the individual leaves the treatment chamber.

This action is especially effective if the volume of cold air that needs to be moved, is small. It is therefore preferred that the interior volume of the treatment chamber is small. In very preferred embodiments, the treatment chamber is just big enough to accommodate an individual without touching it. Treatment chambers of such dimensions are commonly used in PBC applications.

In preferred embodiments of the invention, a valve is provided on the bottom of the treatment chamber to suck out the cold air and pump it into a separate air cooling and storage facility. Cold air is reinserted into the treatment chamber when an individual requiring treatment has entered the chamber, in that cold air is pumped back into the chamber. It is preferred for effectiveness, comfort and safety, that the cold air enters the treatment chamber from the chamber bottom.

The invention thereby achieves minimal loss of cold air, thus hardly any additional time and energy are required to cool down the chamber, to reach the required temperature level and a higher number of patients can be treated in the same time. Between applications, the cold air can be stored by pumping it into one or more suitable storage devices. These can be compressed air cylinders, such as generally used for storing compressed or liquified gases. In a preferred embodiment, the treatment chamber serves as the storage device. For this purpose, it has a wall construction with integrated storage devices. In the simplest case, these storage devices can be formed by interior cavities or interstices in the wall construction.

The transfer of the cold air to and from the treatment chamber can be used for setting and/or adjusting the temperature of the air. Thus, additional cold air can be admixed. The air can be partly or completely conducted through a cooling device, especially an electric cooling device. The invention makes it possible that a customer leaving and entering the treatment chamber does not cause more than the unavoidable time delay. A quick customer exchange becomes possible, enabling a higher number of customers per hour.

Preferably, the treatment chamber does not have the basically rectangular or square ground plan of typical WBC Chambers using electrical air cooling instead of liquid nitrogen cooling. In preferred embodiments, the ground plan of the treatment chamber has concave inner contours, or round comers, to such an extent, that compared to a square ground plan having the same diameter, the interior volume is reduced by up to 25 %. Thus 25% less cooled air is required, less energy and possibly even less compressor power are required, and it may be possible to use a smaller compressor to achieve the same cooling efficiency. Constructing the treatment chamber on a round comers ground plan enables the chamber to be based on tube production, which is easier, cheaper, and provides better insulation.

In preferred embodiments, the treatment chamber has plastic material walls, enabling the reduction of cold transfer through better insulation.

In preferred embodiments, the treatment chamber is configured as part of a modular system, making it possible to combine two or more treatment chambers which are preferably each provided with their own cold air generating and storage units.

Some of the above-described concepts have been used in small PBC devices using liquid nitrogen cooling. As explained initially, however, it is disadvantageous to use liquid nitrogen cooling. The invention makes it possible to use the preferred electrical cooling also in a WBC context, but being limited to immobile treatment chambers which have to be rooms in a building.