TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to a method of packing a sterilizing wrapper, the wrapper being used for wrapping products for sterilization.

Sterilizing wrappers are used for packing single products or a collection of products such as gloves, instruments, dressing materials etc., for sterilizing. The wrappers protect the sterilized product from being contaminated after sterilization. The wrappers are either disposable made of paper or non-woven, or reusable textiles. The disposable wrappers are displacing the textile ones.

The present practice is that the manufacturer cuts the disposable wrappers to single sheets of standard sizes which are then packed in boxes (for example 100 pcs/box) for sale. This kind of a packing is, however, very inconvenient for the user. The box is as big as the sheet (e.g. 100 x 100 cm, or 100 x 120 cm) which makes it difficult to store, handle and use. It requires a lot of space on the wrapping table. The product: to be sterilized is usually wrapped in a twofold wrapper for sterilization which means that two large boxes of the wrapper sheets must be places on the table since the inner and the outer wrapper are often of different materials. Piles of sterilizing wrapper sheets are often also stored hanging on bars close to the wrapping space. In this case, getting only one single sheet from the pile is difficult and many sheets may fail down and, on the floor, various scrap particle are attached to the sheet. These particles are not destroyed during sterilization but may come from the wrapper to the sterilized product such as operating instruments. No loose particles must be attached to these instruments as the particles may end up in the organism of the patient being operated.

DISCLOSURE OF INVENTION

The object of the present invention is to overcome the drawbacks of the packing method described above.

It is a characteristic feature of the method of the invention that the sterilizing wrapper material is in the form of a web and that the web is wound up to a roll.

The present invention also includes a packing for the sterilizing wrapper. A characteristic feature of the packing is that the sterilizing wrapper material is in the form of a continuous roll.

According to a particularly advantageous embodiment of the method of the invention, two webs of the wrapper material are wound on one core. One of the web layers serves as the inner wrapper for the product to be sterilized and the other as the outer wrapper. Thus, only one wrapper roll and only one wrapping phase are required for wrapping a product for sterilization. The inner wrapper web can be narrower (e.g. 1.2 m) than the outer wrapper web (e.g. 1.4 m) , if desired. The web may be paper of non-woven fabric. The inner and the outer wrapper layers may be of the same or a different material. The web is perforated at appropriate spacing (e.g. 1 m) which allows easy tearing off of a wrapper sheet.

Rolls of wrapper are easier to store, handle and use than wrapper sheet boxes. The rolls can be placed in a rack for use. Figures 1 and 2 illustrate this kind of possibilities provided by the invention.

In Figure 1, a rack 1 carrying several different rolls is illustrated. The materials and the sheet sizes of the webs in the rolls may vary; thus a wrapper of the desired kind is easily available. The sterilizing wrapper web is provided with perforations 3 and, by tearing along said

perforation, it is easy to detach a required sheet 4 from the roll. A rack of this kind may be securable to the end of a table, to a wall etc. A sterilizing wrapper packed in a roll thus requires remarkably less space than a wrapper packed in the form of sheets, and expensive space is saved for other use.

Figure 2 illustrates a rack 11 carrying a large number of different rolls 12 in two rows. The rack is provided with rollers 13 for easy transfer to a desired location. Again, many different kinds of wrappers are easily available in small space.

The method and the packing according to the present invention allow remarkably faster and simpler handling of the products to be packed as, in the simplest case, it is necessary only to tear off a sheet of twofold wrapper from a roll when conventionally it is necessary to collect sheets from many boxes or bars which require much space. Further, the danger of the sheet being contaminated is lesser as only one wrapper sheet is taken from the roll and handled at a time while the others cannot fall down since they are attached to each other in the roll.