5.1.8. Palliative Drugs

Palliative treatment—also known as comfort or supportive care—aimed to relieve, reduce or control symptoms, side effects and adverse effects such as pain and sickness at any stage of serious diseases, thus enhancing the life expectancy and comfort of a patient even during the last stages of an illness.

Nagy et al. used lower molecular weight poly(vinyl alcohol) to fabricate the non-woven tissues of a nanofiber with a large surface area for developing an oral fast-dissolving dosage form by applying electrostatic spinning. After loading highly water-soluble Donepezil HCl (which is used to treat dementia-related Alzheimer's disease) into as-prepared nanofibers, the diameter of the electrospun nanofiber was 100–300 nm even when the polymer-drug ratio was 33 w/w%. Interestingly, in comparison with the release rate of the commercially available Aricept tablet (brand name of Donepezil HCl), the drug-loaded nanofiber took less than 30 s to release whereas the Aricept tablet took ≥30 min. This might be due to the availability of the nanofiber's large surface area which is directly proportional to the dissolution rate, corresponding to the Noyes and Whitney equation [100]. Hence, it can be said that organic solvent free electrospinning could be a promising option for manufacturing highly oral dissolving dosage forms for achieving instant drug release and quick onset action with high patient compliance, which is a basic requirement for palliative care policies.
