The present intervention relates to a drawer for use in furniture used in medical-surgical settings, and dental surgeries in particular.

It is common knowledge that the medical instruments, e.g. packaged materials, pliers, scalpels, and so on, that dentists need to treat their patients are generally placed in cabinets in the rooms where the dental surgery's operatories or other equipment are installed.

The furniture used in the rooms containing the operatories usually contain the generic medical materials used in the majority of the procedures that dentists perform on patients.

Dental surgeries also have a room, commonly known as the sterilizing chamber, with an autoclave metal container where water boiling temperatures in excess of 100 ⁰ C are achieved.

The surgical instruments used by the dentist are kept in this container in perfectly sterile conditions.

This medical instrumentation, which includes pliers, tweezers, scalpels and other objects used in dental surgeries, is placed on metal containers, usually in the form of trays.

These trays are prepared at the end of the working day by the dental assistants, who equip each tray with a set of materials and instruments that the dentist will need to treat the patients who have appointments booked for the next day.

On the next day, when it is time for a given patient to arrive at a given operatory, an assistant goes to the sterilizing chamber to collect the surgical instruments previously prepared for said patient and brings them to the operatory, so that they are readily available to the dentist.

This procedure gives rise to certain acknowledged drawbacks, however, that are encountered in dental surgeries in their normal daily professional activities.

A first drawback lies in the fact that the instruments needed by the dentist to treat a given patient are only brought to the operatory when the dentist has already begun to treat the patient.

This means that the assistants must repeatedly come and go between the sterilizing chamber and the various operatories to deliver the appropriate instruments as many times as there are patients to treat on a given day. In some critical situations, moreover, when there are several patients at the

dental surgery to deal with at the same time, or when the assistants are simultaneously involved in performing other tasks, such as answering the telephone, receiving patients, or assisting the dentist, the necessary instruments may still not be available at an operatory when the dentist is ready to take action on the patient seated in the chair.

This leads to self-evident problems both for the dentist, who has to ask an assistant for the surgical instruments and wait for them to arrive, and for the patient who is notoriously impatient and anxious to get the treatment over and done with as soon as possible. Moreover, the assistants are obliged to suspend what they are doing at the time and rush to get the medical-surgical material requested by the dentist at the operatory.

These organizational problems have been exacerbated in recent years by the fact that dental surgeries have fewer and fewer assistants for the obvious reason that they need to contain their costs.

The present invention aims to overcome the above-mentioned drawbacks of the known state of the art.

To be more precise, the main, general object of the present invention is to enable dentists, and any assistants, to schedule the procedures at the various operatories in a more congenial manner, as a function of the patients' appointments, so as to better organize the dental surgery's work load. In other words, the invention described herein proposes to organize the dentist's working day in advance, establishing a priori what type and number of treatments to perform at a given operatory, and the medical-surgical instruments that are needed as a consequence, on the basis of the appointments.

A second object is consequently to limit the situations, which are frequent in the known the state of the art, when dentists have to wait for the arrival of the medical-surgical instruments before they can begin treating a patient when they arrive at an operatory.

A further object of the invention is to optimize the work of the surgery's dental assistants, especially since their number is becoming smaller and smaller, e.g. by minimizing the distance between the sterilizing area and the various operatories. The aforesaid objects are achieved by a drawer for cabinets used in medical-

surgical settings, and dental surgeries in particular, which - in accordance with the content of the first claim - consists of a drawer bottom, slidingly coupled inside a space in said cabinet, said bottom being contained by side walls, one of which is associated with a front complete with a handle so that the user can maneuver said drawer, characterized in that it consists of at least one supporting frame associated with said bottom and coming within the perimeter defined by said side walls, containing a plurality of shelves suitable for holding trays of equipment, instruments and/or medical materials.

The invention advantageously enables the procedures at each operatory to be programmed, e.g. arranging for similar procedures to be handled at the same workstation, thereby improving the surgery's efficiency with respect to the known state of the art.

Another advantage of the invention lies in that the dentist's activities are organized in advance, i.e. the medical-surgical devices, materials and instruments needed for the treatments scheduled in a given chair are brought to the operatory before the arrival of the patients booked on a given day.

Another advantage lies in that the invention enables the dentist to know in advance what treatments to perform on a given day at a given workstation.

Yet another advantage lies in that, during each working day, the assistants have to go to and from the sterilizing chamber and operatories less frequently than is now the case.

This is a far from negligible advantage because, these days, the dentists' pressing demands for the medical-surgical instruments they lack to treat their patient must be urgently satisfied by the assistants. The invention reduces these emergency situations, optimizing the assistants' work and thereby improving their working conditions.

Moreover, the invention improves the dentists' working conditions and contains the discomfort of patients in the chair (a discomfort that, as mentioned earlier, is always best avoided). Further characteristics and particular features of the invention will be better clarified in the following description of a preferred embodiment of the invention, provided simply as an example with reference to the attached drawings, wherein:

- figure 1 shows an axonometric view of the drawer of the invention installed in a cabinet for use in dental surgeries;

- figure 2 shows a partially exploded axonometric view of the drawer in figure 1 ;

- figure 3 shows an axonometric view of an enlarged detail of figure 1.

The drawer of the invention is illustrated in two different working configurations in figures 1 and 2, where it is globally indicated by the numeral 1 , applied to a cabinet M installed in medical-surgical settings, and dental surgeries in particular.

The drawer 1 consists of a bottom 2, slidingly coupled inside a space V in the cabinet M. The bottom 2 is surrounded by four side walls, only three of which are illustrated, with numerals 3, 4 and 5, one of which (the one not shown) has an associated front 6 complete with a handle 7 to enable the user to maneuver the drawer 1.

According to the invention, the drawer 1 consists of two supporting frames 8, 9, associated with the bottom 2 and coming within the perimeter defined by the aforesaid side walls (3, 4, 5 and the one not shown), each of which contains a plurality of shelves 10 for holding trays C of medical-surgical equipment, instruments and/or materials used in dental surgeries.

Clearly, the number of supporting frames associated with the bottom may differ in other embodiments of the invention, providing they come within the perimeter defined by the side walls around the drawer bottom and their height comes within the space wherein the drawer bottom slides.

In fact, it is obvious that the supporting frames 8, 9 are substantially the same height as the drawer 1 contained in the space V. This is to enable them to rest on the bottom 2 and slide normally, with the opening and closing of the drawer 1 , within the space V, without the supporting frames 8, 9 hitting against the upper part of the cabinet M and thereby preventing such maneuvers.

The supporting frames 8, 9 and the bottom 2 are mutually coupled by snap-on engagement means (not shown for the sake of simplicity) preferably projecting from the upper surface 2a of the bottom 2.

In other embodiments, however, the bottom and supporting frames may be coupled in any other manner, e.g. the supporting frames may be arranged so as to engage in a recess in the bottom, which keeps them firmly attached to the draw, with no chance of the supporting frames falling out sideways in the

event of an abrupt maneuver of the drawer.

This is on the understanding that, in further embodiments, the supporting frames may stand on a flat drawer bottom and nonetheless remain stable thanks to the use of suitable side panels in the form of continuous surfaces or tubular elements associated with the bottom, according to embodiments known to a person skilled in the art and designed to allow for the insertion and removal of the above-mentioned trays.

Figure 2 shows that the supporting frames 8, 9 are removably associated with the bottom 2, for reasons that will be explained later on. In further embodiments, each supporting frame and may be connected rigidly to the bottom by connection means of a type known to a person skilled in the art.

With reference to figure 3, according to the preferred embodiment of the invention described herein, the supporting frame 8 consists of a grid structure 11 made, for instance, of a metal material and consisting of shelves 10 and a plurality of vertical uprights 12, each of which - in this specific case - is composed of a tubular element extending in an essentially longitudinal direction.

The vertical uprights 12 are rigidly attached on either side 8a, 8b to the side of each shelf 10 thereby defining three side slots 13 that are accessible to the user and suitable for slidingly inserting and removing the trays C.

Clearly, the above description of the supporting frame 8 also applies to the supporting frame 9.

Thus, when they are coupled to the bottom 2, the supporting frames 8, 9 are arranged with the respective grid structures 11 one up against the other, in line with the centerline of the drawer 1 , so that the corresponding side slots 13 are accessible to the user on either side of the front 6 of the drawer.

Figure 3 also shows that the shelves 10 are arranged on horizontal planes parallel to one another and with a gap between them, and preferably but not necessarily each of these shelves has an open mesh design.

As shown, the supporting frame 8 includes gripping means, generically indicated by the numeral 14, for the user U to use in inserting the frame 8 in the drawer 1 and removing it therefrom.

In this case, the gripping means 14 consist of three handles 15, created at the free ends of shaped elements 16 forming part of the grid structure 11 and

projecting from the upper surface 10a of the supporting frame 8. Clearly, the above description relating to the gripping means 14 for the supporting frame 8 also applies to the supporting frame 9 illustrated in figures 1 and 2. In working conditions, the user U, e.g. the dental surgery assistant, prepares trays C of medical-surgical equipment, instruments and/or material, indicated by the letter S in fig. 3, and places them in the sterilizing chamber, ready for use for treating patients generally scheduled on the next day on the basis of previously-fixed appointments. At the end of a given working day, or immediately before starting the next, the user U collects the trays C from the sterilizing chamber and slidingly places them inside the supporting frames 8, 9, occupying all the shelves 10. In other working conditions, the user U may place the supporting frames 8, 9 (complete with the trays C containing the previously-mentioned instruments S) directly in the sterilizing chamber and then collect them as necessary, holding them by means of the gripping means 14 in order to insert them in the drawer 1.

Both cases prove useful in enabling the dentist to know in advance which treatments are to be performed at a given operatory. Moreover, dentists find all the medical-surgical instruments they need are ready even before starting the day's work.

This reduces the somewhat unpleasant and always undesirable situation that currently occur when dentists arrive at a given operatory or chair and cannot find the instruments they need to take action on the patient awaiting treatment. As a result, the work of the assistants is also better organized than is currently the case because their tasks are better distributed over the time available and they are less likely to have to cope with urgent requests from the dentists, which prevent them from continuing in their activities and considerably add to their daily work load. After completing the procedures scheduled at an operatory on a given day, the assistants withdraw the trays C from the supporting frames 8, 9, replace the instrumentation, prepare the trays C for a new use the next day and deposit them in the sterilizing chamber. Alternatively, in the light of the previous considerations, the assistants can use the gripping means 14 to remove the supporting frames 8, 9 from the drawer 1 ,

still complete with the trays C, and repeat the same steps as described above, possibly placing the supporting frames 8, 9, complete with the trays C and the corresponding medical-surgical instruments S to sterilize in the sterilizing chamber. On the basis of the above considerations, it is therefore clear that the cabinet drawer of the invention achieves all the objects and offers all the advantages previously mentioned.

In the executive stages, changes may be made to the drawer of the invention, consisting for instance in a different shaping of the supporting frame for holding the trays of medical-surgical equipment.

It should be noted that the dimensions of the supporting frame may vary as a function of the type of drawer in which it is to be installed. As a consequence, the number of shelves and side slots in each supporting frame may differ from the situation illustrated in the attached figure without this affecting the benefits offered by the present patent.

Should they come within the scope of the following claims, all the variants described and mentioned, but not illustrated in the attached drawings, shall be covered by the present patent.