Summary of abbreviated impactor measurement workshop organized by the European Pharmaceutical Aerosol Group.

This year, the Drugs Delivery to the Lungs 21 conference broke new ground with the first half-day devoted to a workshop focusing on experimental aspects of the abbreviated impactor measurement concept. The workshop had the following objectives: to define what further needs to be done experimentally to establish abbreviated impactor measurement; and to identify the pathway towards adoption of existing methods into the pharmacopeias, as the next step towards what is hoped will eventually be acceptance by the key regulatory agencies in Europe, Canada and the USA.

Drug delivery to the Lungs 21.

Drug Delivery to the Lungs 21 was focused exclusively on delivery technologies of medicines for the treatment of diseases that are 'local' to the respiratory tract or for wider 'systemic' distribution. Therefore, the range of diseases that can be treated via delivering drugs to the lungs is large and diverse. This diversity means that the delivery technologies (device and/or formulation) are also very varied.

Studies of the human oropharyngeal airspaces using magnetic resonance imaging IV--the oropharyngeal retention effect for four inhalation delivery systems.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the oropharyngeal region from 20 adult volunteers using four model inhalation devices (varying mouthpiece diameters, airflow resistances) and tidal breathing was carried out. Statistical analysis (convex hull method) selected 12 scans from 80 data sets representing the extremes of all dimensions in the population. Twelve physical mouth-throat models were made by stereolithography using the exact scan data.