Development of Direct Measurement Device for Alveolar Breath Carbon Monoxide

A novel portable device for the direct measurement of alveolar breath carbon monoxide (CO) was developed. The major components of the device include a mouthpiece, non-rebreathing two-way valve, Teflon tube, and CO dosimeter. An alveolar CO measurement can be completed within 1.5 min when using the proposed device and measurement protocol. Measurements could be read to the nearest 0.1 ppm. Humidity did not influence the CO measurements taken by the CO dosimeter, plus there were no problems associated with the recovery and carryover of CO through the device. The criterion for significance in statistical analyses was p< 0.05. The average recovery was 103 and 99% for recovery and carryover experiments, respectively. Test results using the proposed alveolar CO measurement system reflected a good reproducibility. This reproducibility was also supported by the finding that the relative standard deviations (RSDs) of the data sets were less than 7％ for the loss experiment and less than 8% for the carryover experiment. Consequently, it would appear that the proposed device can be effectively applied to measure CO levels found in breath, thereby overcoming several disadvantages associated with the conventional bag and adsorbent tube sampling methods.