ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief review on drug monitoring by capillary electrophoresis. In many cases of drug monitoring, the response has to be quantified after analysis. Electrokinetic capillary technology is in the process of becoming applied to drug monitoring in routine laboratories. For electrokinetic separations, small amounts of samples are introduced by electrokinetic or hydrodynamic techniques. Compared to gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, electrokinetic capillary instrumentation is less expensive and somewhat simpler to operate. Compared to high-performance liquid chromatography, the advantages of electrokinetic capillary analyses are high resolution, efficiency and speed, minimal sample preparation, simple automation, small sample size, rapid and cost-effective method development, the use of small amounts of inexpensive and nonpolluting chemicals, and low cost of capillary columns. Quantitation is typically performed by single or multi-level internal calibration using peak heights or peak areas, and by running the samples only once.
