The clinical value of breath hydrogen testing

Clinical applications of breath testing

Breath testing has the potential to benefit the medical field as a cost-effective, non-invasive diagnostic tool for diseases of the lung and beyond. With growing evidence of clinical worth, standardization of methods, and new sensor and detection technologies the stage is set for breath testing to gain considerable attention and wider application in upcoming years.

Breath Hydrogen and Methane Testing for Sibo

Normally the human small intestine is sparsely colonised by bacteria in comparison to the colon. Structural or functional disorders of the gastrointestinal tract can lead to bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine, with colonic bacteria proliferating in the ileum and jejunum. Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), as it is known, is characterized by steatorrhea and diarrhoea, togethe...

Role of hydrogen and methane breath testing in gastrointestinal diseases

The hydrogen and methane breath test represents a very simple, cheap, non-invasive diagnostic procedure to evaluate intraluminal events occurring in the gastrointestinal tract. Its clinical applications are, first of all, lactose malabsorption and small bowel bacterial overgrowth, but it has also been used to evaluate mouth-to-cecum transit time, sweetener malabsorption and intestinal mucosa in...

The value of phase 4 clinical testing.

Hydrogen breath test in schoolchildren.

The frequency of negative hydrogen breath tests due to colonic bacterial flora which are unable to produce hydrogen was determined after oral lactulose challenge in 98 healthy Dutch schoolchildren. There was a negative result in 9.2%. The probability of a false normal lactose breath test (1:77) was calculated from these results together with those from a separate group of children with lactose ...