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A large-volume low-pressure nasal irrigation delivers drug into the nasal cavity? An in vivo study

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Abstract

The nasal administration route emerged as an interesting route in systemic and brain drug delivery, and different modalities of nasal delivery are available. The nasal irrigation is one of them, but there is a lack of studies investigating the distribution of a large-volume irrigation. The main aim of this study was to assess the deposition of radiolabeled saline in the nasal cavities and paranasal sinuses following nasal irrigation by imaging. Five healthy males volunteered to perform large-volume low-pressure nasal irrigation, with a douching device containing 50 mL of radiolabeled isotonic saline. Participants underwent a scintigraphy immediately after. Both the nasal cavities and maxillary sinuses were systematically reached by the solution during nasal irrigation. The sinuses set in a lower position during nasal irrigation showed a tendency to be more irrigated than the sinuses set in a higher position (7.67% vs 22.72%; p = 0.086). Moreover, substantial inter- and intraindividual heterogeneity regarding solution deposition was observed. Large-volume low-pressure nasal irrigation is a good modality to reach the maxillary sinuses as well as the nasal cavities. In order to ensure adequate reaching of both nasal cavities and paranasal sinuses, nasal irrigation should be performed bilaterally.

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Data availability

The data presented in this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Camille Catala and William Poncin for their contribution to this manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Service de Kinésithérapie et Ergothérapie, Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc, Brussels, Belgium

    Pierre Cnockaert & Gregory Reychler

  2. Institut de recherche expérimentale et clinique (IREC), pôle de pneumologie, ORL et Dermatologie, UCLouvain, 1200, Brussels, Belgium

    Pierre Cnockaert, François Jamar & Gregory Reychler

  3. Faculté des Sciences de la Motricité, UCLouvain, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium

    Pierre Cnockaert

  4. PST-A, Université de Tours, Tours, France

    Laurent Vecellio

  5. Pneumologie et allergologie pédiatrique, CHU Timone-Enfants, Marseille, France

    Jean-Christophe Dubus

  6. Aix-Marseille Université, IRD, AP-HM, MEPHI, IHU Méditerranée-infection, Marseille, France

    Jean-Christophe Dubus

  7. Service de Médecine Nucléaire, Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc, Brussels, Belgium

    François Jamar

  8. Service de Pneumologie, Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc, Brussels, Belgium

    Gregory Reychler

  9. Haute Ecole Vinci, Secteur Santé, Département de kinésithérapie, Brussels, Belgium

    Gregory Reychler

Authors
  1. Pierre Cnockaert
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  2. Laurent Vecellio
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  3. Jean-Christophe Dubus
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  4. François Jamar
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  5. Gregory Reychler
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Contributions

Conceptualization, G.R.; methodology, G.R.; formal analysis, P.C. and G.R.; investigation, F.J. and G.R.; resources, F.J.; writing—original draft preparation, P.C. and G.R.; writing—review and editing, J-C.D., F.J., and L.V.; visualization, P.C. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gregory Reychler.

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Ethics approval

The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and the current guidelines for Good Clinical Practice and was approved by the Ethics Committee of Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc and Université Catholique de Louvain (B40320108379) for studies involving humans.

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Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Cnockaert, P., Vecellio, L., Dubus, JC. et al. A large-volume low-pressure nasal irrigation delivers drug into the nasal cavity? An in vivo study. Drug Deliv. and Transl. Res. 14, 1232–1238 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13346-023-01455-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13346-023-01455-z

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