Comparative study of the determination of bupivacaine in human plasma by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and high-performance liquid chromatography.

A comparison was made between high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) as methods for determining bupivacaine in human plasma. Both methods utilized pentycaine as an internal standard, were found to be linear in the range 5-320 ng and had acceptable precision and accuracy. The precision for the HPLC method was better than that for the GC-MS method. The limits of detection of the HPLC and GC-MS methods were ca. 1.0 and 0.1 ng, respectively. Good agreement between the HPLC and GC-MS methods was obtained for the analysis of samples taken from a patient receiving bupivacaine topically. For most purposes the HPLC method would be slightly better. However, for samples containing interfering peaks GC-MS provides a higher degree of resolution from such interferants.