The Behaviour of Inspired Aerosol Pulses in Men

Up to now the behaviour of inert aerosol particles within the human respiratory tract has primarily been studied in young healthy people. The application of bronchoconstrictive or brochodilatory pharmaca to this group results in a corresponding variation of aerosol derived effective airway dimensions (EADs). Each subject has been measured at least twice, once without pharmacon and then after drug application. By this way, each subject has been his own reference. It turned out that variations in EADs are most pronounced in proximal airways; the effect decreases continuously towards the lung periphery until it disappears. For the antagonistic drugs carbachol (bronchoconstrictor) and oxitropiumbromide ((VentilatR) bronchodilator) the sites of action are in almost identical volumetric lung depths V_LDs. The percental changes in EADs are equivalent for the applied doses of pharmaca (Schiller-Scotland (1990)).