Breath Gas Analysis1.pdfVIP

289A. Choukèr (ed.), Stress Challenges and Immunity in Space, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-22272-6_21, ? Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 21.1 Introduction Since ancient times human breath has been used in assisting to diagnose diseases like diabetic coma, liver diseases, and renal failure. Similar to the exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen by the lungs numerous volatile substances either endogenously produced or exogenously absorbed are exchanged via the lungs. However, despite the knowledge on the diagnostic properties of exhaled breath, the smell underlying sub- stances in nature remained undiscovered until recently. A fi rst step toward a better understanding was done in 1971 when Pauling detected about 250 substances in the exhaled breath of humans (Pauling et al. 1971 ) . Thereafter, the implementation of increasingly sensitive diagnostic platforms since the 1980s has led to the identifi cation of several chemical compounds within human exhaled breath. A sample of examples of so-far identifi ed volatile organic and inorganic compounds (VOICs) in human exhaled breath together with a possible clinical application is given in Table 21.1 . 21.2 Technical Approaches for Breath Analyses As compared to most other diagnostic methods used in medicine, the analysis of exhaled breath is truly noninvasive and allows an unlimited number of repetitions. Furthermore, “breath gas analysis” is not only restricted to the analysis of breath. The same analytic method could be applied to gaseous headspace probes over any liquid originating from the human body (Pinggera et al. 2005 ) . Currently operated diagnostic platforms for the analysis of exhaled breath and headspace VOIC M. Dolch (*) ? A. Choukèr ? G. Schelling Department of Anaesthesiology, University of Munich , Munich , Germany e-mail: michael.dolch@med.uni-muenchen.de S. Praun ? J. Villiger VF Analyse-und Messtechnik GmbH , Absam , Austria e-mail: siegfried.praun@