Non-Invasive Nasal Hydromorphone with High Bioavailability for Rapid Onset and Non-Dissociative Acute Pain Control: A Feasibility Study

Achieving pain control in acute pain situations such as battlefield injury, EMS first responders, emergency department cases and breakthrough cancer pain has quite often proved challenging [1-3]. Although opioid medications are effective at acute pain relief, current delivery methods can fail or prove inadequate in many circumstances. Oral delivery of opioids can delay the onset of relief due to slow absorption and a large hepatic first‐pass effect and is ineffective for emetic patients. Intramuscular injection is slightly faster than oral delivery, but has high variability in absorption depending on patient characteristics, can result in tissue depot effects leading to possible under or overdosing and is less effective in shock situations when blood flow to peripheral tissues is limited. Intravenous administration is the preferred method of opioid delivery, but requires trained personnel to initiate and proves challenging in situations where venous access is not available due to shock, hypovolemia, or venous injury from frequent IV medication use.

Intravail® Technology

Intravail® comprises a broad class of chemically synthesizable transmucosal absorption enhancement agents that allow non-invasive systemic delivery of potent peptide, protein, nucleotide-related, and other small and large molecule drugs that were previously only deliverable by injection.