Selective Deposition of Pulsed Charged Aerosols in the Human Lung

The charged, pulsed aerosol technique has the advantage that the inspired aerosol can be delivered efficiently to sites of interest within the lung, and that the exposure time of an airway to the aerosol pulse can be controlled. Our existing mathematical lung deposition model has been extended to deal with charged, pulsed aerosols, and to lung morphologies where bronchoconstriction is present. For a given pulse volume, deposition is enhanced by increasing the level of particle charge and duration of the breath-holding pause. This technique can be used to assist in the "targeting" of therapeutic or other agents on to different sites within a normal or diseased lung and for designing and optimizing clinical procedures.