ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE@#To establish a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) method for determination of propofol in human blood.@*METHODS@#Propofol and 2-(tert-Butyl)-4,6-dimethylphenol (internal standard) were isolated from human blood samples with liquid-liquid ether extraction. The organic layer was collected after centrifugation and dried using the water bath. The extracted residue was analyzed by GC-MS.@*RESULTS@#Propofol and the internal standard showed a good separation with a good linear concentration ranged from 0.02 to 10 microg/mL in blood. The linear function was y = 0.313 6 x-0.006 8 with the correlation coefficient of 0.9997. The precision of intra-day and inter-day were less than 4.8% and the lower limit of detection of propofol was 0.005 microg/mL. Propofol concentration of blood was 0.14 microg/mL using this method in the practice work.@*CONCLUSION@#The GC-MS method is rapid, sensitive, reliable and suitable for qualitative and quantitative analysis propofol of blood in forensic toxicological analysis and clinical drug monitoring.