Extraction of local anaesthetics from human blood by direct immersion-solid phase micro extraction (SPME)

Summary Local anaesthetics have been shown to be extractable from human whole blood samples by direct immersion (DI)-solid phase micro extraction (SPME). After deproteinization with perchloric acid, the pH of the clear supernatants of human whole blood samples containing the drugs were adjusted to about 7 with 10 M NaOH in the presence of NaCl; a polydimethylsiloxanecoated SPME fiber was then immersed directly into the sample solution to allow adsorption of the drugs before capillary gas chromatography (GC) with flame ionization detection. The DI-SPME for 1-mL whole blood gave peaks for all the drugs; only a small amount of background noise appeared and this gave no problems in the detection of the drugs. Recoveries of the ten drugs from human whole blood was 0.74–19.7 %. The calibration curves for seven drugs showed linearity in the range of 0.25–12 g mL^–1 whole blood, with detection limits of 54–158 ng mL^–1.