Rapid determination of lidocaine solutions with non-column chromatographic diode array UV spectroscopy and multivariate calibration.

A new method for the rapid determination of pharmaceutical solutions is proposed. A conventional HPLC system with a Diode Array Detector (DAD) was used with no chromatographic column connected. As eluent, purified water (Milli Q) was used. The pump and autosampler of the HPLC system were mainly utilised as an automatic and convenient way of introducing the sample into the DAD. The method was tested on the local anaesthetic compound lidocaine. The UV spectrum (245-290 nm) from the samples analysed in the detector was used for multivariate calibration for the determination of lidocaine solutions. The content was determined with PLS regression. The effect on the predictive ability of three factors: flow, data-collection rate and rise time as well as two ways of exporting a representative UV spectrum from the DAD file collected was investigated by means of an experimental design comprising 11 experiments. For each experiment, 14 solutions containing a known content of lidocaine were analysed (0.02-0.2 mg ml(-1)). From these 14 samples two calibration sets and two test sets were made and as the response in the experimental design the Root Mean Square Error of Prediction (RMSEP) values from the predictions of the two test sets were used. When the factor setting giving the lowest RMSEP was found, this setting was used when analysing a new calibration set of 12 lidocaine samples (0.1-0.2 mg ml(-1)). This calibration model was validated by two external test sets, A and B, analysed on separate occasions for the evaluation of repeatability (test set A) and determination over time (test set B). For comparison, the reference method, liquid chromatography, was also used for analysis of the ten samples in test set B. This comparison of the two methods was done twice on different occasions. The results show that in respect of accuracy, precision and repeatability the new method is comparable to the reference method. The main advantages compared with liquid chromatography are the much shorter time of analysis (<30 s) as well as the automatic and simple analytical procedure and the low consumption of organic solvents.