Patent ID: 8609022

Claim:
A medical heat exchanger, comprising: a thin tube bundle in which a plurality of heat transfer thin tubes for letting heat medium liquid flow through a lumen are arranged and stacked; a seal member sealing the thin tube bundle while allowing both ends of the heat transfer thin tubes to be exposed and forming a blood channel that allows blood to flow therethrough so that the blood comes into contact with each outer surface of the heat transfer thin tubes; a housing containing the seal member and the thin tube bundle and provided with a blood inlet port and a blood outlet port positioned respectively at both ends of the blood channel; a pair of heat transfer thin tube headers provided at respective side ends of the thin tube bundle so as to form a pair of flow chambers that surround the respective ends of the thin tube bundle; and a liquid inlet port and a liquid outlet port of the heat medium liquid provided at one of the headers or the respective headers, wherein the thin tube bundle is divided in a flow direction of the blood channel into a plurality of thin tube bundle units each including a plurality of the heat transfer thin tubes, forming a stack structure of a plurality of stages of the thin tube bundle units, spacers are mounted between each of the plurality of stages of thin tube bundle units to form gaps of a predetermined interval between the respective stages, in a region inside the blood channel, an insertion member is paced in each of the gaps so as to fill a part of a volume of the gap, and the insertion member has a channel communicating with the blood channel, at least one of the flow chambers is partitioned into a plurality of flow compartments by a partition wall positioned at a boundary between the thin tube bundle units, and the heat transfer thin tube headers are configured so that the heat medium liquid to be introduced passes through the plurality of thin tube bundle units successively via each of the flow compartments; wherein the partition wall is positioned so as to correspond to each of the gaps thereby forming a channel such that the heat medium liquid flowing in from the liquid inlet port passes through the plurality of stages of thin tube bundle units successively via any one of the flow compartments and flows out of the liquid outlet port via any other of the flow compartments.