A review of chromatographic methods for ketamine and its metabolites norketamine and dehydronorketamine.

Ketamine has a synthetic, sedative, nonbarbiturate and fast-acting anaesthetic properties and it is commonly used in both humans and veterinary surgery. There are many analytical methods available for the qualitative and quantitative determination of ketamine and its metabolites. We have focused on sample pre-treatment and chromatographic techniques used since the year 2000 for the determination of ketamine and its metabolites in biological samples. Liquid and gas chromatography coupled with various detection techniques (mass spectrometry, ultraviolet or fluorescence detection) have been used in these publications. This review gives information on the implementation of methods for studying ketamine and its metabolites in various research applications. It could be useful in forensic sciences including doping control and also in the therapeutic drug monitoring of ketamine and norketamine in human and animal clinical surgery.