Quantitation of propofol in plasma by capillary gas chromatography.

A rapid, accurate and sensitive gas chromatographic method is described for measuring plasma concentrations of propofol. The technique required only 200 microliters of plasma and a single extraction process, using chloroform containing pentadecane (500 ng/ml) as an internal standard. Quantitation was achieved on an SGE BP-1 fused-silica capillary column (25 m x 0.33 mm I.D., 0.5 micron film thickness) with flame ionization detector. The peak response was linear over a wide concentration range (10-10,000 ng/ml) and the limit of quantitation was 10 ng/ml. The absolute recoveries were over 96% (n = 3). The method is applicable for both research and routine plasma level monitoring.