Abstract
It is considered that aerosol inhalation for upper airway diseases began in B.C. 500. Today, aerosol inhalation therapy for upper airway allergies and inflammation has been the major treatment in the daily otorhinolaryngology clinic in Japan. However, this therapy still has several problems to resolve, for example, mean average of aerosol particle diameter, distribution of particle diameter, volume of vaporized aerosol, air pressure during local exposure to aerosol particle, kinds of dissolved medicine in the aerosol particles, anaphylaxis to the dissolved antibiotics, evidence based efficacy of aerosol therapy to upper airway diseases, and bacterial contamination of equipment during and after use in patients' infected airway. Our department has partly resolved these problems in recent years. As well we demonstrated that only exposure of the upper airway to hyperthermal aerosol without any medicine was effective in nasal allergy patients. Furthermore, we are attempting to develop the application of aerosol therapy for immunization against infectious diseases, miss-swallowing, and treatment of upper airway malignant tumors.
