Liquid chromatographic bioanalytical determination of ropivacaine, bupivacaine and major metabolites

Bioanalytical methods for the determination of ropivacaine, bupivacaine and their major metabolites in urine and blood plasma are presented.-Ropivacai ne is a new local anaesthetic drug mainly used for surgery and for postoper ative pain relief. The samples are hydrolysed and cleaned using solid-phase extraction and analysed using ion-pair reversed-phase Liquid chromatograph y with gradient elution. The analytes are detected using UV at 210 nm. The methods are highly selective and the limits of quantification were 1 mu M i n urine and 0.1 mu M in plasma, respectively. The between-day variance was generally below 3% (RSD). Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.