Importance

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Abstract

There are many lung diseases and conditions for which the preferred form of treatment involves delivering a medicament of the appropriate sort down the Patient's airways into the lungs themselves. The most effective treatments involve the inhalation as an aerosol of some suitable agent in normally inhaled air, and it will often be the case that it is best to deliver the agent as a 'spike' or short pulse at some selected point within the Patient's breathing cycle. The present invention proposes treatment apparatus--specifically and in particular small (pocket-sized) hand-held apparatus--that utilises the 'spike' principle. It suggests apparatus for the delivery of a medicament into the Patient's lungs in the form of a bolus, pulse, or spike of the medicament entrained in and driven by the normal respiration air, which apparatus comprises a drug dispenser (that in essence may be a conventional nebuliser or a dry-powder delivery system 11), in the reservoir (12) of which is stored the medicament to be administered, driven by some suitable pressurised gas from a valved cylinder (18) thereof to deliver an aerosol cloud of medicament into a tube (103) through which the Patient is breathing (by mouth) normal air, the gas cylinder valve (19) being controlled by a suitably programmed computing device (101) that is fed data describing the pressure within the breathing tube (103) and so is able to open and close the valve (19) at and for a time such as to drive the dispenser (11) to deliver (to the tube and thence to the Patient's lungs) a required pulse of medicament at any selected point within the Patient's respiratory cycle.

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First Claim