Collaborative study of the spectrophotometric determination of procainamide hydrochloride

The USP analysis for procainamide-HCl is titrimetric and relatively nonspecific, capsule and tablet dyes may interfere, and the method is not applicable to coated tablets. In the spectrophotofluorometric method the sample deteriorates when exposed to a xenon source. In the ultraviolet spectrophotometric method reported here, the sample is dispersed in acid medium, possible interferences are extracted in chloroform, base is added, procainamide is extracted in chloroform, the residue is dissolved in sodium hydroxide, the compound is measured by absorption at 272 nm and comparison with a standard. Recoveries of standards added to capsule, tablet, and injection composites ranged from 99.3 to 102%. Twelve collaborators reported duplicate assay results for all 3 dosage forms with per cent standard deviations for 5 samples ranging from 1.01 to 1.27%. The method has been adopted as official first action.