Aerosol Therapy

Aerosol Therapy 

a therapeutic application of dispersed systems of aerosols. The use of aerosols for therapeutic, prophylactic, diagnostic, and narcotic prescription is based on the possibility of rapid, painless application of necessary medications to wound surfaces, mucous membranes, and respiratory passages of the lungs, from which these substances enter the blood. There is a distinction made between natural and artificial aerosol therapy.

Natural aerosol therapy is defined as the inhalation under natural conditions of pure air which contains beneficial additives in the form of ions of seawater elements, therapeutic mineral water, substances produced by plants (conifers, camphor trees, lindens, laurels, various herbs), and phyton-cids.

Artificial aerosol therapy may be administered by the fumigation of open wounds and sections of diseased skin, the inhalation of smoke from medicinal herbs, and the inhalation of hot steam, which may be pure or mixed with medication. Aerosol therapy has become widespread with the use of various kinds of spray apparatus. Dry, moist, and oily aerosols of either local or general effect are used in aerosol therapy. It is possible to atomize sea and mineral water, various salt solutions, infusions of medications, herbs, phytoncids, enzymes, hormones, vitamins, antiseptics, many antibiotics, and other substances. Aerosol therapy by means of inhalation is administered in diseases of the respiratory passages and lungs and in certain other illnesses. Prophylactic inhalation of aerosols is prescribed for bacillus carriers and for the prevention of surgical complications; it is also used to dissolve harmful industrial aerosols or to facilitate their expulsion from the lungs.

One kind of artificial aerosol therapy is electroaerosol therapy, which consists of imparting a positive or negative electrical charge to the aerosols. Special apparatus, known as electroaerosol generators, are used for electroaerosol therapy.

REFERENCE

Eidel’shtein, S. I. Osnory aerozol’terapii. Moscow, 1967.

N. M. VORONIN