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Nebulizer

Modern medicine supplies humanity with an unprecedented number and diversity of drugs, medicines, therapeutics, medicaments, treatments, and the like. A physician or health care provider may choose a drug or a combination of drugs and a most preferred means of delivery to the patient based upon several factors. Medical nebulizers that nebulize a fluid into an aerosol for inhalation by a patient are well-known devices commonly used for the treatment of certain conditions and diseases. Patients requiring treatment of certain kinds of respiratory conditions frequently need to have medications delivered directly to the lungs. Nebulized or aerosolized solutions are the preferred method of delivery of respiratory medication because the medicant is fragmented into small particles that are more efficiently deposited near sites of drug activity in the lungs. Nebulizers have applications for conscious, spontaneously-breathing patients and for controlled, ventilated patients. In nebulizers, a diverter is primarily used to direct a gas across a liquid channel to create a venturi effect causing the liquid to be entrained into the gas stream. As a result of the nebulization process described above, the fluid is transformed into an aerosol, that is, the fluid is caused to form small particles that are suspended in the air and that have a particle size in a range suitable for the intended therapy. A common therapy is inhalation therapy, whereby a patient inhales a medicated aerosol to treat an ailment, such as asthma. Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disorder of the airways in which inflammation contributes to hyper responsiveness to allergic and irritant stimuli, to airflow limitation, to a broad spectrum of respiratory symptoms, and to disease chronicity. Features of this inflammatory process include denudation of airway epithelium, edema, recruitment and activation of various types of migratory inflammatory cells, and increased basement membrane collagen deposition which is believed to be the cause of the chronic changes known as asthmatic airway remodeling. Inhalation nebulizers deliver therapeutically effective amounts of pharmaceuticals by forming an aerosol which includes particles of a size that can easily be inhaled. The aerosol can be used, for example, by a patient within the bounds of an inhalation therapy, whereby the therapeutically effective pharmaceutical or drug reaches the patient's respiratory tract upon inhalation.

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