pMDIs used for asthma and COPD inhalation therapy are said to be less effective if not sprayed at the right time because the medication may not reach the affected area. In contrast, this study developed a device that sprays automatically in response to the user's inhalation. This device is set to spray 0.2 s after the inhalation speed reaches 25 L/min, which is considered effective. We are currently conducting further verification of its effectiveness through continuous use. For users who cannot reach or maintain an inhalation rate of 25 L/min, such as the elderly or infants, we measure the inhalation rate in advance and set the spray timing to 0.2 s after reaching that rate. There may be variability in the time it takes to reach this rate, though, so it is possible that the spray timing may not always be appropriately set. Additionally, the amount of medication that can be inhaled when using the automatic spray device has not yet been measured. Therefore, in this study, we used a breathing simulator to reproduce the inhalation rates of the elderly and infants and to measure the amount of inhalable drug when the spray timing was changed. Based on these results, we determined the optimal spray timing for each inhalation pattern.
NAKAGAWA et al. (Wed,) studied this question.