Heart Failure: Is There a Breath Test?
http://www.medpagetoday.com/CriticalCare/CHF/38076
It seems I haven’t talked about this before, but there is a lot of very interesting science that is under development that allows for the potential of some rather incredible medical information simply from a few deep breaths. Sort of the same concept as the alcohol breathalyzer, anything that is volatile at body temps will move from your blood stream to your lungs and from thence to you breath. It turns out that lots of medical conditions are presaged by these volatile compounds and an accurate and sensitive method of detecting these things can go a very long way toward early (and accurate) diagnosis of a whole host of diseases. Maybe the Star Trek tricorder is a hand-held breathalyzer?
