Clinical Evaluation of Novel VSCs Detector for Mouth Air Analyses

Objectives: Oral malodor represents an important and delicate problem for many individuals. Volatile sulfur compounds (VSCs) found in the human mouth air are responsible for oral malodor. Therefore, portable devices that can accurately evaluate VSCs are highly required in dental practice. There are several detectors on the market, however, these devices were found to lack accuracy and reproducibility in comparison with a gas chromatography (GC) modified specially for detecting VSCs in mouth air. The purpose of this study is to asses the accuracy of the novel VSCs detectors with utilizing semiconductor sulfide sensor, a separation column and a sample loop for measuring VSCs, i.e. methyl mercaptan and hydrogen sulfide, respectively.

Methods: Prior to clinical tests a number of laboratory trials were performed in order to ascertain the prototypes' selectivity for compounds that can be normally found in human mouth air and also to asses the sensors performances at different hydrogen sulfide concentrations. For the clinical study we compared the detectors with a GC (GC ¨C 8APFp, Shimadzu, Japan) modified for detecting oral VSCs.

Result: Ethanol, Methanol and Acetone did not interfere with VSC£ó measurements by the semiconductor sensor at the concentrations in human mouth air or in dental practice environment. For hydrogen sulfide measurements the data obtained from the tested prototypes were correlated with the data acquired from the GC (R-Square=0.9684, SD=0.06662, N=308, P<0.0001, in hydrogen sulfide and R-Square=0.95871, SD=0.04876, N=275, P<0.0001, in methyl mercaptan measurements). At low hydrogen sulfide concentrations such as threshold level, the machines showed constant and accurate results, although other devices are lacking accuracy.

Conclusion: Our clinical and laboratory tests demonstrate that the novel VSCs detectors have a reliable specificity to VSCs in human mouth air, also showed both extremely high reproducibility and strong correlations with VSC levels measured by GC.