Venous reservoir

Claim 1

A venous reservoir which comprises: two sheets of flexible material sealed together about the edges to define a bag having a venous blood inlet, a venous blood outlet and a vent outlet, the inlet being located at the lowermost portion of a generally vertical inlet wall of the container to allow the blood entering the inlet to immediately enter a large volume in the bag to cause the blood to expand rapidly, the top of said inlet wall communicating with said vent outlet whereby a sharp decrease in the velocity of the blood flow resulting from its rapid expansion provides buoyancy to air in the blood causing air bubbles to rise to the top of the bag and be vented through said vent opening, said bag having a top wall extending from the vent opening and toward the outlet that is curved in a a manner to prevent the velocity of the blood from increasing until the blood is substantially at the blood outlet, the top wall extending forwardly and downwardly with a curved portion opposite to the inlet whereby the air bubbles that have not been discharged immediately upon entering the reservoir may flow back up the top wall to the vent opening, said inlet wall lying within a plane that is at an angle which approaches ninety degrees with respect to the inlet axis; said inlet being located at the bottom of said inlet wall and the vent opening being located at the top thereof, the vent opening and the blood outlet being diagonally spaced from each other at opposite ends of said container; said inlet being located in a horizontal plane that is higher than the horizontal plane in which the blood outlet is located, the inlet axis being perpendicular to the blood outlet axis and the vent opening axis being parallel to the blood outlet axis.