HUMAN PLASMA AND AQUEOUS-HUMOR DETERMINATION OF IMIPENEM BY LIQUID-CHROMATOGRAPHY WITH ULTRAVIOLET DETECTION

A rapid and simple high performance liquid chromatography analytical m ethod is described for the quantitative determination of imipenem in h uman plasma and aqueous humor. Following methanol extraction, the solu tion was chromatographed on a reverse-phase 25 cm C18 Viosfer (10 mum) column using a mobile phase of 0.1M Borate buffer (pH=7.2)-methanol ( 90:10, v/v) at a flow rate of 1.5 ml/min. The drug was detected by UV absorption at 313 nm. Total chromatographic analysis time was 15 min. The response was linear from 0.5 to 70 mug/ml for plasma and 0.2 to 5 mug/ml for aqueous humor and the detection limits were 0.4/mug/ml for human plasma samples and 0.15 mug/ml for aqueous humor samples, respec tively. The method has been applied to the analysis of patients underg oing imipenem therapy and scheduled for cataract surgery.