TRANSDERMAL PATCHES: PHYSIOCHEMICAL AND IN-VITRO EVALUATION METHODS

Various drugs are available these days, which may either require long term administration via multiple doses or may be susceptible to enzymes and first pass-metabolism or all the above. One way to administer such drugs is through the transdermal route. After a transdermal delivery system is designed, it is important to evaluate it for various essential parameters that help us determine how effective it is, i.e. its physiochemical parameters, which describe the physical and some of the chemical properties of the patch and it's in-vitro parameters, which would mimic how the patch would behave on exposure to real time conditions On the body. This article briefly reviews the ideal characters for choosing this mode of drug delivery, its advantages and provides an in-depth analysis of the techniques used to physio-chemically evaluate the delivery system's important parameters and also the conditions that help understand the systems behavior in a real time scenario.