Blood alcohol analysis: a comparison of the gas-chromatographic assay with an enzymatic assay.

Ethanol in blood was assayed by 2 currently available procedures: a commercial kit enzymatic assay and a gas chromatographic procedure. Both methods were performed with commercially available materials and equipment. Results by the 2 procedures agreed well. For the 192 specimens studied, the correlation coefficient was 0.983, and the least-squares values of slope and intercept were 0.999 and 0.001 g/100 ml respectively. Use of isopropanol or ethanol swabs did not affect results of the enzymatic procedure.