| Abstract: | The use of capillary column gas chromatography for drug screening in forensic toxicology has become increasingly widespread. Screening procedures however are often lengthy and unsuitable for rapid confirmatory or quantitative applications. In order to develop a practical scheme for confirmatory/quantitative analysis, we have optimized a series of temperature profiles to allow the rapid quantitative determination of a wide range of acid/neutral and basic drugs in extracts from post mortem fluids and tissue. The appropriate profile is selected based on the retention index on a standard crosslinked methyl silicone column used to screen extracts. The use of a 5% phenyl methyl silicone phase allows complementary identification, and allows the separation of some pairs of compounds with identical retention indices in the screning procedure. |
