Evaluation of the Possibility of Volatile Organic Compounds Determination in Exhaled Air by Gas Chromatography for the Noninvasive Diagnostics of Lung Cancer

The possibility of determining volatile organic compounds contained in exhaled air by concentrating them in sorption tubes, two-stage thermal desorption, and gas-chromatographic determination with a flame-ionization detector on various chromatographic columns was studied. It has been established that Tenax TA is an optimal sorbent for the preconcentration, and the highest separation efficiency is achieved on a PLOT CP-Porabond-Q column. The preconcentration of analytes with no breakthrough was achieved upon passing a 0.5-L sample through a sorbent at a rate of 200 mL/min.