Floating Drug Delivery Systems: A Review

The purpose of writing this review on floating drug delivery systems (FDDS) was to compile the recent literature with special focus on the principal mechanism of floatation to achieve gastric retention. The scientific and patent literature shows increased interest in academics and industrial research groups regarding the novel dosage forms that can be retained in the stomach for prolonged and predictable period of time. One of the most feasible approaches for achieving a prolonged and predictable dug delivery profiles in the gastrointestinal tract is to control the gastric residence time, using gastroretentive dosage forms that will provide us with new and important therapeutic options. From the formulation and technological point of view, the floating drug delivery system is considerably easy and logical approach. The developments of FDDS are including the physiological and formulation variables affecting gastric retention, approaches to design single-unit and multiple-unit floating systems, advantages, formulation variables and their classification are covered in detail. This review also summarizes the in vitro techniques, in vivo studies to evaluate the performance and application of floating systems. These systems are useful to several problems encountered during the development of a pharmaceutical dosage form. An attempt has been made in this review article to introduce the readers to the current technological developments in floating drug delivery