Thesis title: Development and optimisation of pre-treatment procedures to enhance total haemoglobin for carboxyhaemoglobin analysis in diluted blood samples.
Supervisors: Loyiso Vuko, and Bronwen Davies

Carbon monoxide (CO) is a poisonous gas that usually goes unnoticed due to its lack of colour, taste and odour. The main problem this study will be focusing on regarding CO-oximetry is the result depends on the state of the sample. This means if the total haemoglobin (tHb) is below the required threshold, no values will be provided for COHb. The aim is to develop and optimise pre-treatment procedures to effectively increase total haemoglobin in excessively dilute blood samples, thereby enabling the determination of carboxyhaemoglobin using CO-oximetry. The objectives of this study will be to: Develop two procedures to increase the total haemoglobin. The first procedure will concentrate the blood content by centrifugal evaporation while the second procedure will increase the total haemoglobin in the blood through the addition of a commercial quality control sample. The developed procedures will then be validated for integration into the Forensic Toxicology Unit (FTU) laboratory’s official analytical protocol. Lastly, the effectiveness of the optimised procedure will be assessed through retrospective analysis of authentic blood samples for which no COHb results were obtained due to low tHb.