Development of Empirical Models to Predict Deposition of Aerosols in the Extrathoracic Airways of Children

• Author / Creator

  Golshahi, Laleh

• The experimental studies described in this thesis were performed with the goal of measuring deposition of aerosols, inhaled either nasally or orally, in the extrathoracic airways of children in different age groups. We pursued in vitro methods and characterized the deposition of aerosols in the extrathoracic airway models of children to address the current concerns in the area of pediatric dosimetry. Using rapid prototyping, nasal airways of ten adults and fourteen children 4-14 years old as well as oral airways of nine children 6-14 years old were replicated from CT scans and MRI images during the course of this research. In addition to these 33 plastic replicas, ten previously-built nasal airway replicas of infants were also used to develop three empirical models to predict the deposition of ultrafine aerosols in nasal airways of infants and the deposition of micrometer-sized particles in the nasal and oropharyngeal airways of children. One of the goals of this study was also to develop a simplified idealized child throat model that could simulate the average oropharyngeal deposition among the children 6-14 years old. The resulting idealized child model presented here will hopefully simplify and accelerate the development of new inhalable drugs for the pediatric population suffering from respiratory diseases.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Children
  • Aerosols
  • Deposition

• Graduation date

  Spring 2012

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3RD0T

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.