breathhold

English

Etymology

breath +‎ hold

Noun

breathhold (plural breathholds)

1. (uncommon, especially medicine) The act of holding breath.
   • 2006, Andre J. Duerinckx, Coronary Magnetic Resonance Angiography, →ISBN, page 44:

     The spatial resolution and signal-to-noise in coronary MRA can be further improved by either switching to nonbreathhold techniques (thus eliminating some of the time constraints needed for breathhold techniques) or by using better coil designs[.]

2. (uncommon, especially medicine) An instance of holding breath.
   • 2012, Mark Creager, Joseph Loscalzo, Joshua A. Beckman, Vascular Medicine: A Companion to Braunwald's Heart Disease, →ISBN:

     Acquisition times can be long and prevent imaging within the time span of a single breathhold.

Verb

breathhold (third-person singular simple present breathholds, present participle breathholding, simple past and past participle breathheld)

1. (uncommon, medicine) To hold one's breath.
   • 1995, Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England:

     If the patient was in a condition to breathold, this was done; however, due to the general condition of many of the patients studied, this was not always attempted.