Feasibility and accuracy of nasal alar pulse oximetry.

Background: The nasal ala is an attractive site for pulse oximetry because of perfusion by branches of the external and internal carotid arteries. We evaluated the accuracy of a novel pulse oximetry sensor custom designed for the nasal ala.

Methods: After IRB approval, healthy non-smoking subjects [n=12; aged 28 (23-41) yr; 6M/6F] breathed hypoxic mixtures of fresh gas by a facemask to achieve oxyhaemoglobin saturations of 70-100% measured by traditional co-oximetry from radial artery samples.

Feasibility of a breath test for monitoring adherence to vaginal administration of antiretroviral microbicide gels.

Adherence to microbicide gel use is critical to optimizing effectiveness in preventing human immunodeficiency virus transmission. The authors hypothesized that ester taggants added to vaginal gels would generate exhaled alcohol and ketone metabolites and provide a "breath test" for vaginal gel use. This 2-arm (vaginal and dermal), randomized, participant-blinded, pilot study tested this hypothesis.

Oral adherence monitoring using a breath test to supplement highly active antiretroviral therapy.

A breath-based adherence system to document ingestion of oral medications (e.g., HAART) was investigated.

Measurement of ethanol in gaseous breath using a miniature gas chromatograph.

We designed and built a novel, miniature gas chromatograph (mGC) to use exhaled breath to estimate blood ethanol concentrations that may offer GC quality sensitivity and specificity, but with portability, reduced size, and decreased cost. We hypothesized that the mGC would accurately estimate the serum ethanol concentration using exhaled breath. Human subjects (n = 8) were dosed with ethanol employing the Widmark criteria, targeting a blood concentration of 0.

Prototype of a breath-based analysis system for medication compliance monitoring.

Poor compliance to prescribed medication regimens in clinical trials continues to be a major obstacle to drug development success and cost reduction, and there is no gold standard technology that is cheap and effective to reliably measure drug compliance. This paper presents a new drug compliance scheme based on the detection of volatile markers in exhaled breath using a commercial off-the-shelf electronic nose (e-nose) system. A mouth air collection system was developed and interfaced with an e-nose for automated sampling and analysis of breath samples.