Breath testing

The GV2003 from GV Instruments is a CO2 and N2 mass spectrometer, providing a safe, rapid and non-invasive breath-testing tool for a number of clinical conditions. The 13C-breath test is Detection of Helicobacter pylori, but this is just one of an increasing range of tests that now includes fat malabsorption, gastric emptying, lactose intolerance, amino acid oxidation, liver function, fatty acid oxidation, intestinal overgrowth and metabolic turnover.

The GV2003 was developed after the success of the GV2002, which offered a 10 sample breath analyser with built-in prep system and mass spectrometer. Both the GV2002 and the GV2003 meet the European specifications for the analysis of 13C-Urea Breath Tests, and both models use the same mass spectrometer.

Features of the GV2002 include: analyses at less than 3 minutes per sample; low helium consumption rate (less than 15 mL/min; 220 sample Gilson autosampler; and each sample is calibrated against a known standard. The software includes built-in quality control procedures to ensure accuracy of diagnosis.

The GV2003 uses an online internally calibrated CO2 reference gas which is measured immediately after each breath CO2 sample. The use of online calibrated CO2 gas, rather than external gas standards in sample containers, eliminates any potential gas handling errors, and ensures that the maximum number of autosampler positions are filled with either breath or QA/QC samples. After each sample analysis, the individual 13C value of the breath CO2, in % with respect to PDB, may be output to a laser printer. By default, all sample records and raw data from a multi-sample run are transferred automatically to a proprietary spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel in order to facilitate the automatic production of fully customised reports.

Providing three levels of operator access ensures simplicity for routine operation, yet also provides complete instrument control for trained laboratory personnel. The GV2003's multi-tasking is both flexible and intuitive, running under the Windows 95 operating system - therefore, data may be processed through to final reports during a fully automatic analysis. The software includes self-checking protocols to ensure that the instrument is performing correctly and that the data is of the highest quality.