A Review on Floating Drug Delivery System

Management of infirmity through medication is entering a new era in which growing number of novel drug delivery systems are being employed and are available for therapeutic use. Oral sustained release gastro-retentive dosage forms (GRDFs) offer many advantages for drugs with absorption from upper parts of gastrointestinal tract and for those acting locally in the stomach, improving the bioavailability of the medication. Floating Drug Delivery Systems (FDDS) is one amongst the GRDFs used to achieve prolonged gastric residence time. 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 recent developments of FDDS including the physiological and formulation variables affecting gastric retention, approaches to design single-unit and multiple-unit floating systems, and their classification and formulation aspects are covered in detail. This review also summarizes the in vitro techniques, in vivo studies to evaluate the performance and application of floating systems, and applications of these systems.