| 摘要 |
PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an endoscope which hardly causes failures in workability and handling by reducing the looseness generated in a tube which is passed through an inserting section when the endoscope receives a thermal load in a high-temperature high-pressure steam sterilizing process. SOLUTION: A flexible tube 15 contains bending wires 21 and wire coating coils 22 which bend a curved section 14, a light guide 24, an air/water tube 25, a treatment apparatus passing channel tube 26, a plurality of cables 27, etc., as built-in members. When this endoscope is repeatedly sterilized in the high-temperature high-pressure steam sterilizing process, the flexible tube 15, treatment apparatus passing channel tube 26, and air/water tuber 25 shrink in the longitudinal direction from their initial states. The amounts of shrinkage X1, X2, and Y of the tubes 26, 25, and 15 are adjusted to meet relations Y<=X1 and Y<=X2.
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