[Mercurimetric determination of cephalosporin antibiotics]

The conditions for a potenciometric estimation of cefuroxime, cefsulodin, cefotaxime and ceftriaxon with mercury(II) perchlorate after the previous reaction of the antibiotics with hydroxylamine were established. The mercurimetric determination was well reproducible with the relative error of the mean ranging up to 1% and the results are identical with the spectrometric and microbiological determination. There is no need to use a standard. With this technique only the content of effective antibiotic with an intact beta-lactam ring can be estimated. The method did not provide objective results for cefoperazone and cefoxitin. The direct determination of cephalosporin degradation products was verified for cefalexin, cefalothin, cefuroxime, cefsulodin and ceftriaxon.