Intravascular drug delivery with a pulsed liquid microjet

Occlusions of the retinal veins and arteries, associated with diseases such as hypertension and arteriosclerosis, are a major cause of severe and irreversible loss of vision. Treatments for retinal vascular diseases have been unsatisfactory owing in part to the difficulty of delivering drugs to the site of disease within the eye. In this article, we demonstrate that a new device, the vapor bubble-driven pulsed liquid microjet, can deliver drugs into the lumen of small vessels such as those found in the retina. A 15- micro m-diameter liquid jet traveling at more than 60 m/s was shown to penetrate and deliver fluid through the wall of a blood vessel that was 60 micro m in diameter. Perforation of the wall of the blood vessel did not extend beyond the jet diameter.