Liquid chromatographic determination of barbiturates using a hollow-fibre membrane for postcolumn pH modification

A sensitive, high-performance liquid chromatographic method is described for the determination of barbiturates by postcolumn pH modification. The barbiturates (barbital, phenobarbital, hexobarbital and amobarbital) were separated on a C18 column using a mixture of methanol and water as an eluent. Then the pH of the eluent was raised to 10 by introducing ammonia or ammonium ion through a sulphonated hollow-fibre membrane inserted between the column and the detector. The detection was based on the primary ionized barbiturates at 240 nm. At barbiturate concentrations of 2.0 micrograms/ml, the within- and between-experiment precision (relative standard deviation) was 0.65-3.28 and 0.76-1.90%, respectively. The limits of detection were about 0.5-2.5 ng at a signal-to-noise ratio of 3. The method was applied to the determination of amobarbital in saliva.

Quantitative analysis of common anaesthetic agents

A summary of chromatographic (e.g. gas chromatography, high-performance liquid chromatography) and non-chromatographic (e.g. radioimmunoassay, enzyme-multiplied immunoassay) analytical techniques suitable for the quantitative analysis of the most popular inhalational (halothane, methoxyflurane, enflurane, isoflurane and nitrous oxide), intravenous (barbiturate, benzodiazepines, etomidate, althesin, morphine, fentanyl, alfentanil, sufentanil, droperidol and ketamine) general and amide-type local (lidocaine, mepivacaine, etidocaine and bupivacaine) anaesthetic agents and some of their metabolites, in biological material, is described. In the case of inhalational anaesthetics attention is also payed to pollution measurement and breath-to-breath monitoring.

Drug level monitoring: sedative hypnotics

Barbiturates and other traditional non-barbiturate sedative hypnotics are still extensively prescribed for the treatment of insomnia. There are a number of situations where identification or quantitative determination of these agents in biological fluids is required. Gas-chromatography offers highly sensitive and specific procedures for the determination of these compounds. The use of a nitrogen-specific detector allows a relatively simple sample preparation for sensitive detection and the use of capillary columns with bonded liquid phase allows separation of barbiturates without derivatization. In recent years liquid chromatography has also been extensively applied to the determination of these compounds. Sensitivity and selectivity of detection of barbiturates have been improved with the use of an alkaline mobile phase. Immunoassays for the determination of therapeutic concentrations of phenobarbital are very popular as the assays can be rapidly performed automatically. Use of these techniques has been extended for emergency detection of barbiturate overdose and for monitoring high-dose pentobarbital therapy.