Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, NC, 27695, USA.
Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, NC, 27695, USA; Joint UNC-NCSU Department of Biomedical Engineering, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA.
Comput Biol Med. 2022 Feb;141:105132. doi: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2021.105132. Epub 2021 Dec 23.
A challenging aspect of pulmonary drug delivery devices, e.g., metered dose inhalers (MDIs), is to deliver therapeutic drugs to prescribed target locations at the required dosage level. In this study, validated computer simulations of micron-drug inhalation with angled or radially positioned helical fluid-particle streams are simulated and analyzed. For a suitable swirl number significant improvements in drug delivery, especially to deeper lung regions, have been achieved. Specifically, considering realistic polydisperse particle distributions at the mouth inlet for a subject-specific upper lung airway geometry, a 10-degree angled helical stream increased the local efficacy by up to 26% in comparison to a conventional helical stream, causing an overall dosage of about 60% to the deep lung. Considering lobe-specific drug targeting scenarios, while using an off-center, i.e., radially well positioned, helical-flow mouthpiece, the local particle-deposition efficacy increased from 9% to 24% in the left lobe and from 25% to 38% in the right lobe in comparison to conventional drug-aerosol stream released from the central position. The efficacy of helical streams for pulmonary drug delivery applications has been established.
肺部药物输送装置（例如，计量吸入器（MDI））的一个挑战是将治疗药物递送到所需剂量水平的规定目标位置。在这项研究中，对具有角度或径向定位的螺旋液-粒流的微米药物吸入进行了经过验证的计算机模拟和分析。对于合适的旋涡数，可以显著提高药物输送效率，特别是对深层肺部区域。具体而言，考虑到特定于主体的上呼吸道几何形状的入口处的入口处的实际多分散颗粒分布，与传统的螺旋流相比，10 度角的螺旋流将局部疗效提高了 26％，从而使深部肺部的总剂量约为 60％。在考虑针对特定叶的药物靶向场景时，使用偏心的，即径向位置良好的螺旋流吸嘴，与从中部位置释放的常规药物-气溶胶流相比，左叶的局部颗粒沉积效率从 9％增加到 24％，右叶的局部颗粒沉积效率从 25％增加到 38％。已经确立了螺旋流在肺部药物输送应用中的功效。
