Analysis of carbamazepine and its 10,11-epoxide in serum by direct sample injection using surfactant containing...

Column switching is used in conjunction with surfactant containing mobile phases and traditional reverse phase LC columns to provide a highly reproducible and accurate analytical procedure for carbamazepine and its 10,11-epoxide in serum. This approach eliminates the tedious sample preparation steps commonly used in the analysis of drugs by HPLC, while providing a high degree of protein removal prior to the final analysis. Various pre-columns were investigated and a pellicular reverse phase column was found suitable for optimum concentration of drugs and removal of serum proteins. A variety of standard reverse phase columns could be used for the analytical separation. The separation of the drugs could be accomplished with a high degree of reproducibility. Tandem pre-column operation was demonstrated to give a sample throughput of 10 h-1.