We aimed to prepare and investigate microparticles with the varying contents of calcium gelling ion, loaded with phenytoin, a standard antiepileptic agent, in its acidic form. Two different methods of alginate-based microparticles preparation were used: with and without treatment with chitosan. Furthermore, two standard procedures, the one-stage and the two-stage, were applied. Microparticle size of 12 one-stage formulations ranged from 466 to 636 mum. Both types of formulations, chitosan-treated and nontreated, appeared to be highly loaded with the model drug (91-96%). The chitosan-coated alginate-based microparticles prepared by the one-stage procedure exhibited kinetics of phenytoin liberation comparable to a similar sustained release system that had been tested at pH 6.8, as published earlier. As the gel erosion of alginate-based microparticles should be potentiated by the higher pH (used in the present study at pH 7.4), the most favorable of 12 formulations, with the liberation half-time of about 2 hr, seemed to be eligible for further modifications. Counterintuitively, the applied two-stage procedure did not appear to beneficially affect the dissolution behavior of phenytoin when tested in two formulations, which makes further modifications necessary.