High-pressure liquid chromatographic method for the determination of hydromorphone in human plasma with electrochemical detection.

A high-pressure liquid chromatographic method with internal analogue standardization for the determination of hydromorphone (Dilaudid) in human plasma is described. The method involves extraction from plasma with chloroform and quantification with an electrochemical detector after high-pressure liquid chromatographic separation on an ion-pair column. Using 3 ml plasma the detection limit is about 50 pg/ml; in the routine procedure the limit of determination can be fixed at about 250 pg/ml with a correlation coefficient of about 10%. The method is selective. In case of extractions from blank plasma samples interfering peaks are not observed.