Screening for acidic and neutral drugs by high performance liquid chromatography in post-mortem blood.

A procedure for screening acidic and neutral drugs in post-mortem blood is presented. The procedure, which is sensitive and specific, employs high performance liquid chromatography with a reversed-phase column and an ultraviolet detector. The volume of specimen used is 1 mL. Over 40 drugs are identifiable by this technique, including analgesics, anti-inflammatory agents, barbiturates and other hypnotic-sedatives, and anti-epileptic drugs. To date, over 500 post-mortem blood specimens have been analyzed by the authors.