Work

Evaluation of Patient Experience for a Computationally-Guided Intranasal Spray Protocol to Augment Therapeutic Penetration: Implications for Effective Treatments for COVID-19, Rhinitis, and Sinusitis

Year: 2022

Type: article

Abstract: The global respiratory outbreak in the form of COVID-19 has underlined the necessity to devise more effective and reproducible intranasal drug delivery modalities, that would also be user-friendly for adoption compliance. In this study, we have collected evaluation feedback from a cohort of 13 healthy volunteers, who assessed two different nasal spray administration techniques, namely the vertical placement protocol (or, VP), wherein the nozzle is held vertically upright at a shallow insertion depth of 0.5 cm inside the nasal vestibule; and the shallow angle protocol (or, SA), wherein the spray axis is angled at 45° to the vertical, with a vestibular insertion depth of 1.5 cm. The SA protocol is derived from published findings on alternate spray orientations that have been shown to enhance targeted delivery at posterior infection sites, e.g., the ostiomeatal complex and the nasopharynx. All study participants reported that the SA protocol offered a more gentle and soothing delivery experience, with less impact pressure. Additionally, 60% participants opined that the VP technique caused painful irritation. We also tracked the drug transport processes for the two spray techniques in a computed tomography-based nasal reconstruction; the SA protocol marked a distinct improvement in therapeutic penetration when compared to the VP protocol.

Source: Medical Research Archives

DOI: 10.18103/mra.v10i4.2774