Abstract
Original Manuscript Submitted: 10/26/06; Final Draft Received: 4/22/07Pulmonary drug delivery through the use of in-line nebulizers is a widespreadmethod for delivering therapeutics to mechanically ventilated patients. However,previous studies have shown that often less than 30% of salbutamol sulfate, thegeneric therapeutic administered to asthmatics, ever reaches the lungs. The pur-pose of this study was to investigate methods through which nebulized drug de-livery could be improved. The first part of these experiments involved testingthree brands of nebulizers to determine if substantial differences existed betweenmodels. It was found that all three of the nebulizers performed comparably. Inthese nebulizers, most of the drug was recovered in the nebulizer housings, indi-cating that most of the therapeutic never escaped the device. When humidity wasapplied to the driving airflow prior to the air reaching the nebulizer in an effortto reduce evaporation effects, it was found that residual salbutamol sulfate levelsin the nebulizer decreased by nearly half.
Published Version
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