Critical assessment pertaining to Gastric Floating Drug Delivery Systems

Plan: This review discusses overall approaches ofgastroretentive drug delivery systems and limelight on floating drug deliveryits formulation development and discusses various evaluation parameters.Preface: Oral drug delivery of nearly half of the drugsgets thwarted owing to the high lipophilic nature .Bioavailability of thesedrugs being function of their aqueous solubility and dissolution tends toexhibit low magnitude and high intra and inter subject variability. Many drugshave a short biological half life and thus have invents potential inameliorating GI absorption. To overcome the poor bioavailability and patientcomplaints much attention has been given to Gastro retentive drug delivery system,although there are various approaches in retaining the drug within the gastricregion.Outcome: Floating dosage form can be broadly divided into effervescences and non effervescences both have its own merits and demerits.To state that a given floating drug delivery system successfully float ,its lagtime should be within 5 min. Factors affecting floatation are size, shape,density, single or multiple unit, fed or unfed state, nature and frequent offood, gender, age, patient related etc. Evaluation include buoyancy study,floating and swelling behavior, drug release in additional to conventionalevaluation, in vivo evaluation is important since the results may notadequately correlate with in vitro results. The usual reported in vivofloatation studies include x-ray, gamma scintigraphy, gastroscophy, magneticmarker, ultrasonography and octanoic acid breath test.