Monitoring of Propofol in an Ex Vivo Lung Model

Commercially available low-cost metal oxide semiconductor gas sensors run in temperature cycled operation are studied for online monitoring of propofol in an ex vivo perfusion lung model. A lung from a slaughter pig was connected to a heart lung machine and mechanically ventilated. Propofol as an intravenous anesthetic was added into the blood stream. The sensors were able to quantitatively detect exhaled propofol in the very low ppb-range with a strong correlation of up to 0.95 to the blood plasma concentration and a correlation up to 0.92 to the ion mobility spectrometer used as a reference. This demonstrates the potential of gas sensor systems for online drug monitoring.