A wide variety of medical treatments utilize the delivery and introduction of therapeutic compositions to a treatment location in a patient. In home or outpatient settings, the delivery methods used can include procedures such as oral delivery or inhalants, while in clinical or hospital types of settings, a therapeutic fluid is often injected using a needle-based system. In more complicated methods, a fluid can be delivered surgically through a tubular device, such as a catheter or endoscope, and in some cases, the surgical method can involve minimally invasive procedures.
For minimally invasive procedures, a number of systems have been developed for delivering therapeutic fluids to treatment sites within a patient that include minimally invasive, tubular delivery lumens (e.g., catheters or endoscopes) and pressurized fluid sources. In some cases, these fluid sources include a syringe-like structure that is actuated by a plunger. This plunger can be controlled via a console having control features that help the user to control the amount of pressurized fluid that is delivered to and/or expelled from the system. These systems can include needleless fluid injection systems, for example. Needleless devices and methods for treating tissue of the urinary tract are discussed, for example, in Applicants' copending application U.S. Ser. No. 12/087,231, filed Jun. 27, 2008 (Copa et al.), titled “Devices, Systems, and Related Methods for Delivery of Fluid to Tissue”, and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0129125 (Copa et al.), the entire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference. One area of the body in which such needleless fluid delivery systems have been known to be used is for diseases of the prostate, such as prostatitis, benign prostatic hyperplasia, and prostatic carcinoma.
Needleless fluid delivery systems can include the use of a tube-like device, such as an elongated catheter tube, which is configured to provide a jet-injection of a therapeutic fluid at a desired treatment site. Generally, a needleless injector is used to deliver the therapeutic fluid that is provided from an external reservoir that is located at a proximal end of the tube-like device. The actual fluid administration occurs at a distal end of the tube-like device. Due to the relatively long travel length of the therapeutic fluid through the tube-like device, an injector must generally be capable of pressurizing the therapeutic fluid to relatively high pressures.
For any injection or injected tissue, therapeutic agents should be delivered with minimal discomfort and procedure time, and with the best possible degree of accuracy of delivery location and delivery volume, and with uniform and accurate distribution of a fluid throughout injected tissue. Further, due to the characteristics associated with the delivery of therapeutic compositions to treatment locations in a patient, there is a need to provide improved procedures, systems, and components for fluid delivery using needleless fluid delivery systems. Such procedures, systems, and components would provide for accurate and controlled dispensing of therapeutic compositions to specific treatment locations within a patient. In particular, there exists a continuing need to provide improved devices for delivering therapeutic fluids to different tissues such as locations of the urinary tract including the bladder, bladder neck, prostate, urethra, kidneys, and ureters.