Cardiorespiratory Diagnostic Study

Overview

This study uses a new breathing device called 'N-Tidal C' handset which measures breathing patterns. Investigators have found that people with cardiac and respiratory illnesses breathe out a gas, called carbon dioxide (CO2), in a different way to healthy people. The pattern of breathed out CO2 (the waveform) varies according to the underlying health of the user's lungs. Monitoring these changes may help doctors to more accurately diagnose and monitor the most common and serious respiratory conditions.

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is among the most prevalent respiratory conditions, and in the top five causes of death worldwide. However, mis-diagnosis rates are high (both under- and over- diagnosis), owing to the lack of a simple, reliable and specific diagnostic test. In addition, COPD is often diagnosed late in the natural history of the disease, which misses the opportunity for early intervention, with early treatment and health-behaviour changes (smoking cessation). Spirometry, the current gold standard for diagnosis, is unreliable (technique-dependent), crude (measures airflow), and non-specific (multiple respiratory conditions can produce similar patterns on spirometry). It also relies on proper administration by specially trained members of staff. As a result, spirometry is often (a) not performed before a speculative diagnosis of COPD is made, and (b) performed poorly, resulting in poor-quality information on which to base a respiratory diagnosis. There is therefore a need for a simple, reliable, robust and accurate test for diagnosing COPD which is non-operator dependent, and non-technique dependent. Currently, capnography is invasive, expensive and can only be recorded in specialist centres via a nasal cannula and micro-stream sampling of expired carbon dioxide in the intensive care setting. The N-Tidal C (NTC) handset, a new (CE-marked), hand-held, wireless device has been developed to monitor the user's Tidal Breathing CO2 (TBCO2) waveforms at rest, during normal tidal breathing. This device can be safely operated in the home environment, has a battery life of weeks, and has an isolated, disposable, breath pathway that isolates an individual's breath from the rest of the device, making it safe to reuse between patients after the outer casing has been decontaminated using a 3-stage disinfection process. The N-Tidal technology has the potential to offer new insights into lung physiology (above and beyond those currently available from spirometry and lung function testing), and early evidence from TidalSense's previous clinical studies suggests that the TBCO2 data could be used to fingerprint and diagnose COPD.