Sensors for rapid detection of environmental toxicity in blood of poisoned people

Abstract

Recently, the diagnosis and treatment of poisoned person can be done only in specialized centers. Furthermore, currently used clinical methods of intoxication diagnosis are not sufficient for early detection. Conventional laboratory tests based on urine and blood require professional, high skilled staff, high cost equipment as well as they are arduous and lasting analytical procedures. There is a need to elaborate relatively cheap and easy to use tests, which can simplify and shorten the process of diagnosis of intoxicated patients as well as simply monitoring of patients from high-risk groups (firemen’s, miners, security, policemen, soldiers etc.) having contact with toxic gases. This chapter focuses on novel, early detection sensor for rapid diagnostics of environmental toxicity in blood of people intoxicated with carbon monoxide. Sect. 1 presents, a brief overview of physiological relevance of blood carbon monoxide levels on poisoning and overview of commercially available methods of CO detection in human blood. In Sect. 2 the optical properties of blood are presented. Section 3 shows optoelectronic systems, such as absorption spectroscopy and low-coherence interferometry designed to detect optical properties of blood, such as refractive index, absorption. In Sect. 4, the sensor for detection of environmental toxicity in blood is presented. The application of the sensor can shorten the time of analyses of poisoned patients. It will be dedicated to support diagnostics of all patients in bad clinical state, where anamnesis is difficult to obtain, intoxicated people or fire victims. We assume to use such method in the Emergency Departments, small clinics and doctors’ offices. In the Sect. 5 the hollow core microstructured waveguide biosensors for applications in biomedical sensors are presented. This waveguide can be used for investigation of optical parameters (scattering, refractivity and other) of many biological liquids. The last section focuses on our conclusion about optoelectronic method which can be used for rapid detection of environmental toxicity in blood of poisoned people.