Minimally invasive, sustained, intra-tympanic drug delivery system
OwnerJohn M. Epleyinventor
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A convenient and preferably wearable system and method for implementing the controlled and sustained delivery of a medical liquid through the tympanic membrane and into the middle ear including port structure that produces a minimal opening in the membrane, a wearable and fixated fluid-conduit structure coupleable to the port structure, a reservoir adapted to contain delivery fluid, and an operationally controllable pump system applied to the fluid conduit structure, and/or an iontophoretic electrode system applied within the fluid conduit structure and to the subject's body, and operable to effect the delivery of reservoir-held fluid or medically active ions through the fluid conduit and port structures to the middle ear.
Claims15
An intra-tympanic apparatus comprising:
- a needle having a sharpened end adapted to pierce the tympanic membrane of an ear and having an opposite end, the needle having at least two longitudinal bores, each in fluid communication with a fluid outlet proximate to the sharpened end and each in fluid communication with a fluid inlet proximate to the opposite end, the fluid outlet being laterally offset from a relatively central longitudinal axis of at least one longitudinal bore with which the fluid outlet is in fluid communication and configured to deliver relative to a central longitudinal axis of the needle a relatively unidirectional angular fluid stream into a middle ear;
- at least two flexible lumens each in fluid communication with the fluid inlet of one of the longitudinal bores of the needle;
- means for delivering a controllable amount of a fluid into the middle ear through at least one of the flexible lumens and the needle;
- and
- means for removing fluids from the middle ear through the needle.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.