Simple Breath Test Might Diagnose Heart Failure

 An experimental breath test, designed to quickly identify 

patients suffering from heart failure simply by analysing the 

contents of a single exhaled breath, has demonstrated 

promise in early trials, a team of researchers says.

The investigators stressed that their evaluation is based on a 

small group of participating patients, and that more 

extensive research will have to be done to confirm their initial 

success.

But by subjecting a patient's breath to a rigorous but fast 

analysis of the hundreds of so-called volatile organic 

compounds contained therein, the study team said it has so 

far been able to correctly diagnose heart failure among 

newly hospitalized patients with a 100 percent accuracy.

Every individual has a breath print that differentiates them 

from other people, depending on what's going on in their 

body," explained study lead author. And that print can tell us 

a lot about a person, what they've been exposed to and what 

disease they have," he added.

That's what makes the new field of breath testing so 

promising, because it is non-intrusive, so there is no risk 

involved. And you can do it anywhere, in a clinic, in a 

hospital, anywhere.

Currently, a diagnosis of heart failure comes from a variety of 

factors. These include medical history and symptoms, and a 

physical exam in which a doctor will listen to a patient's heart 

and lung sounds, and check ankles, feet, legs and abdomen 

for signs of fluid build-up. Blood tests and an 

electrocardiogram can help confirm that heart failure exists.

In the new study, to gauge how well the non-invasive breath 

test could identify heart failure, the team collected exhaled 

breath samples from 41 patients who had been admitted as 

in-patients to the Clinic.

Of those, 25 had been admitted with a primary diagnosis of 

"acute de compensated heart failure" while another 16 

patients had shown no signs of heart failure but did have 

other cardiovascular issues. A single breath sample was 

obtained from each of the patients within 24 hours of 

admission, as well as from an additional 36 patients with 

acute de- compensated heart failure as an independent 

point of comparison.

Within two hours of collection, all the samples were subject 

to the breath test analysis, which relied upon "mass 

spectrometry" technology to scan the samples for their 

molecular and chemical compound content. Some of those 

compounds had been pegged as potential tell-tale signs of 

heart failure.

The result: The breath test correctly identified all the patients 

with heart failure, clearly distinguishing them from those 

cardiac cases where heart failure was not an issue.

A Dr.  said that if further research were able to establish its 

effectiveness, a breath-driven tool for identifying heart failure 

would be a helpful diagnostic innovation -- but more so in a 

doctor's office or clinic than in the hospital.

If it is clear that it is highly reliable and specific and sensitive, 

then yes, it would be a welcome advance, he said. But I 

would say it would be perhaps more helpful for primary care 

physicians in an outpatient setting, because that is where it's 

most challenging to identify heart failure. Today a diagnosis 

in that environment is based on a patient's history and exam, 

but symptoms for heart failure can easily overlap with a lot of 

other diagnoses. And the blood work that would be taken in 

a doctor's office might not come back until the next day, 

delaying identification," he noted.

Study author added that the test is "theoretically cheap. But 

of course we're still early in the process of exploring its 

potential. This study is really a proof of concept. There is 

much more work that needs to be done to get it to the point 

where it would become widely available.