A Critical Review on Floating Tablets as a Tool for Achieving Better Gastric Retention

Most of the oral drug delivery systems demand better retention of drug in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) for better bioavailability. One of the tools for better gastric retention of the drug is to administer it as a floating drug delivery system (FDDS) by reducing its density, compared to the gastric fluids. This system is helpful to overcome the problems associated with the conventional pharmaceutical dosage forms. The present work is an effort to systematically review the latest advancements in FDDS with a major spotlight on how these systems act to make the dosage form float in the gastric fluid for the slow release, better gastric retention, and improved bioavailability of the orally administered drug. As managing diseases through medicines is going in a new age in which innovative delivery system is being used as well as made accessible for remedial use. The excipients used for making such oral gastro-retention dosage forms (GRDF) to provide sustained release profile of drugs along with the work done so far by different scientists in the past two decades; the patents filed in this area; the evaluation methods for checking the quality of FDDS; and their applications are the major highlights of this work.