If your child or loved one is suffering from asthma or respiratory disease, your doctor may have prescribed a valved holding chamber to use with metered dose inhaler.
He (she) will regularly use this metered dose inhaler to take his (her) treatment. The drug, will be expelled into the mouth when the patient presses onto the MDI and will reach the lungs when inhaling.
For infants or elderlies, it is very difficult to properly take the medication because they are not able to synchronize their inspiration with the exact moment they are pressing onto the MDI.
The majority of the drug will then impact in the mouth and trachea and will not reach the lungs, where it is actually needed.
The valved holding chamber will allow the drug to deposit in the deep lung and limit the deposition in the mouth and the throat.
Technical characteristics :
Established in the 1980s by the manufacturers of asthma treatments with metered dose inhalers, the valved holding chambers, then called “Tube spacer“, were only intended to facilitate the treatment by limiting the need for “hand-lungs » synchronization.
Initially created with large volumes (sometimes close to 1 L), small volumes became favored in the 90s due to the improvment of metered dose inhalers(much less powerful jets).
Today, expectations of valved holding chambers have gone beyond the need for synchronization.
Valved holding chambers have gradually become very technical products allowing the selection of fine particles, helping to improve pulmonary deposition by limiting the oropharyngeal deposition of the drug, an essential criteria of choice, especially for infants and young children.