A liquid chromatography-electrospray tandem mass spectrometry method for the determination of antiarrhythmic drugs and their metabolites in forensic whole blood samples.

A liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method, using pneumatically assisted electrospray ionization was developed for the determination of amiodarone, desethylamiodarone, propafenone, N-depropylpropafenone, 5-OH-propafenone, flecainide, and sotalol in human antemortem and postmortem whole blood. A mixture of methanol and acetonitrile was used to extract the samples, and the clear extracts obtained from the protein precipitation were injected directly onto an ethyl-linked phenyl LC column. The isotope dilution technique was applied for quantitative analysis. The relative intralaboratory reproducibility standard deviations were 5-9% at a concentration range of 1-5 mg/L and 9-12% at a concentration of 0.1 mg/L. The mean true recoveries were greater than 91% in the concentration range of 0.05-5 mg/L. The detection limits were in the range of 8-18 µg/L.