Abstract
Background: The complex structure of the nasal cavity filters most of the nasally administered aerosols and prevents effective drug delivery to the olfactory region. Due to low medication bioavailability in this region, treatment of brain tumors with direct nose-to-brain drug delivery is still not feasible.
Objectives: The objective of this study is to experimentally evaluate the performance of a hybrid delivery method in an image-based nasal model by leveraging the advantages of both the bi-directional delivery strategy and the electric field guidance of charged particles.
Methods: A sectional hollow nasal cast model was developed from an anatomically accurate nasal airway model that allowed direct quantification of olfactory deposition and visualization of regional deposition distributions. Influences of different electric field strengths and two delivery strategies (normal and bi-directional) on the olfactory delivery were tested.
Results: Results show that olfactory deposition is very sensitive to the voltage of the electrode close to the olfactory region. For both the normal and bi-directional deliveries, electric field guidance resulted in a significant increase (3–5 times) in deposition in the olfactory region. The olfactory deposition with electric guidance was 1.6 times higher when using the bidirectional method than under normal breathing conditions.
Conclusions: Results of this study indicate that the combination of electric field guidance of charged particles and the bi-directional delivery strategy is promising to deliver significantly improved medications to the olfactory region.
Citation
Xi J, Demski T, Fallatah Y and McDonnell K. Experimental Test of Olfactory Deposition of Charged Particles under Electric Field Guidance and Bi-directional Breathing Conditions. SM J Biomed Eng. 2016; 2(1): 1007.