A single-step extraction for screening whole blood for basic drugs by capillary GC/NPD.

Basic drugs were routinely extracted from whole blood under alkaline conditions into n-butyl acetate. An aliquot of the n-butyl acetate was injected into a gas chromatograph equipped with a nitrogen-phosphorous detector and a wide-bore cross-linked 50% phenylmethyl silicone capillary column. Absolute and relative retention times were recorded for more than 100 extracted drug standards. Recovery from whole blood was determined for some of the more frequently encountered drugs. This one-step extraction proved to be reliable for general screening and has been used routinely in forensic and clinical toxicological analyses.