Comparison of microparticle transport and deposition in nasal cavity of three different age groups

Abstract

Objective: The nasal cavity effectively captures the particles present in inhaled air, thereby preventing harmful and toxic pollutants from reaching the lungs. This filtering ability of the nasal cavity can be effectively utilized for targeted nasal drug delivery applications. This study aims to understand the particle deposition patterns in three age groups: neonate, infant, and adult.

Materials and methods: The CT scans are built using MIMICS 21.0, followed by CATIA V6 to generate a patient-specific airway model. Fluid flow is simulated using ANSYS FLUENT 2021 R2. Spherical monodisperse microparticles ranging from 2 to 60 µm and a density of 1100 kg/m³ are simulated at steady-state and sedentary inspiration conditions.

Results: The highest nasal valve depositions for the neonate are 25% for 20 µm, for infants, 10% for 50 µm, 15% for adults, and 15% for 15 µm. At mid nasal region, deposition of 15% for 20 µm is observed for infant and 8% for neonate and adult nasal cavities at a particle size of 10 and 20 µm, respectively. The highest particle deposition at the olfactory region is about 2.7% for the adult nasal cavity for 20 µm, and it is <1% for neonate and infant nasal cavities.

Discussion and conclusions: The study of preferred nasal depositions during natural sedentary breathing conditions is utilized to determine the size that allows medication particles to be targeted to specific nose regions.

Keywords:

• Nasal particle deposition
• neonatal airway
• infant
• adult
• CFD model
• inhaled aerosol deposition study

Acknowledgments

We thank the Department of Aeronautical and Automobile Engineering, Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal Academy, Manipal for the computing resources provided to carry out this work.

Ethical approval

The approval of the Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC 416/2020) for this study is obtained from Kasturba Medical College Manipal and all data is anonymized.

Author contributions

John Valerian Corda: conceptualization of the project, developing methodology and modeling of the work, analysis and processing data, manuscript writing, reviewing, and editing. B. Satish Shenoy: supervision of project, manuscript writing, reviewing, and editing. Kamarul Arifin Ahmad: developing methodology and modeling of the work. Leslie Lewis: identifying CT scans, checking for patent nasal cavities, analysis, and processing data. Prakashini K: identifying CT scans, and checking for nasal cavities. Anoop Rao: developing methodology and supervision of the project. Mohammad Zuber: conceptualization of the project, supervision of the project, developing methodology, and modeling of the work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All the data relevant to this study is given in this article.

Additional information

Funding

The study was performed and the manuscript was prepared by the authors without any external funding.