Anodic adsorptive stripping voltammetric determination of the anesthetic drug: methohexital sodium.

Methohexital (MS) determination is based on the formation of insoluble mercury salt on a hanging mercury drop electrode after preaccumulation by adsorption. This property was exploited in developing a highly sensitive stripping voltammetric procedure for the determination of the drug. The anodic current of adsorbed compound is measured by linear sweep anodic stripping voltammetry (LSASV), preceded by a period of preconcentration. The effect of various parameters such as supporting electrolyte composition, pH, initial potential, scan rate, accumulation time and ionic strength are discussed to characterize the interfacial and redox behavior. The detection limit was found to be 2x10(-7) M (56.8 ppb) with 180-s accumulation time. The interference of some amino acids, ascorbic acid and some metal ions was investigated. The application of this method was tested in the determination of methohexital in spiked urine samples. The precision of the method is satisfactory with a relative standard deviation of 2.5%.