Abstract
Controlled release dosage forms have been extensively used to improve therapy with several important drugs. Oral sustained release gastroretentive dosage forms offer many advantages for drugs with absorption from upper parts of gastrointestinal tract and for those acting locally in the stomach. Floating drug delivery system is one amongst the gastroretentive dosage forms used to achieve prolonged gastric residence time. In recent years various scientific and technological advancements have been made in the research and development of oral drug delivery systems to overcoming physiological activities, such as short gastric residence times and unpredictable gastric emptying time. In order to avoid such adversities, efforts have been made to increase the retention time of the drug-delivery systems for more than 12 hours via floating drug delivery systems. The purpose of this paper is to review the recent literature and current technology used in the development of gastroretentive dosage forms. The recent developments of floating drug delivery systems include the physiological and formulation variables affecting gastric retention, approaches to design single unit and multiple unit floating systems, their classification and formulation aspects and also in-vitro and in-vivo studies are covered in detail.
