Thus, differences in distribution over hours following either slow infusion or instantaneous bolus injection could be observed in the simulations 2. These results suggested that bolus injection would not lead to an inferior distribution range compared to slow infusion. Because bolus injection delivers the total amount of drug to the lumbar injection site almost instantaneously, driving forces are likely to exert their effect on all drug molecules over a longer period of time, therefore increasing the chance for the drug to reach distant cervical targets faster and with higher concentration. These results, although more qualitative in nature, provided the clinical team with useful confidence when deciding for bolus as the sole administration mode for later cohorts of ongoing clinical trials. Predicting the amount of drug at a particular level of the spinal column after administration is difficult. Previous attempts to use classical pharmacokinetic approaches for modeling drug delivery in the cerebrospinal fluid have worked reasonably well for describing the doseresponse relationship when the target site of drug effect is directly at the site of injection 2. Movies For Apple Ipod Cars. This has advanced the understanding and utility of spinal anesthesia for instance. However, when drug exposure after spinal administration occurs away from the site of injection, or the anticipated dose concentration effect relationship does not appear to hold, the limitations of the classical pharmacokinetic approach to spinal drug delivery become apparent. The further away the pharmacological target is from the site of administration, the more challenging it becomes to achieve a predictable concentration for attaining clinical effect. Reasons behind these difficulties were recently highlighted in an editorial by Drasner in the British Journal of Anaesthesia where he very colorfully recounts August Biers initial clinical report of spinal anesthesia with cocaine in 1. Consistent in both Biers experiment and current clinical practice is the problem of variability in clinical response that limits our knowledge of cerebrospinal fluid drug delivery. This editorial accompanied an article by Ruppen et al. Their results show that the range of concentrations one can measure from CSF is very large 2. This provides further confirmation that the intrathecal space does not behave as a well mixed volume and that measuring concentration in the CSF after injection to support a classical pharmacokinetic approach may not provide any meaningful data for analysis, or information for clinical decision making. What are the most important factors affecting intrathecal distribution With the challenges to interpreting the clinical data that exists for characterizing the dose concentration effect relationship in spinally administered agents, our approach for understanding the influence of biophysical forces on distribution appears to be well motivated. By approaching the problem from first principles, the contribution of physiologic forces due to breathing and cardiac cycles was predicted as a primary factor that allows a drug to distribute through the spinal canal. While this allows axial spread of the administered agent, our results show that subtle factors such as drug speed of injection, orientation of the injecting needle, and the amount of fluid administered will have a differentiating effect on the pattern of drug distribution in the CSF. Given the variability that can occur in the CSF distribution, it is not surprising that measured values within a population of patients may not have a strong correlation to either the amount of drug given, the patients response to the agent if directly measurable like anesthesia or to a number of other typical covariates that are commonly used to adjust patient dosage. These results provided evidence that allow us to assess the factors, which contribute the most significantly to variation in the overall distribution.