Electrogenerated chemiluminescence determination of some local anaesthetics

This work describes the use of the emerging technique of electrogenerated chemiluminescence (ECL) for the determination of some local anaesthetics using an ECL reaction with tris(2,2'-bipyridine)ruthenium(II). Five local anaesthetic compounds are studied, and experimental conditions optimized to achieve detection limits of 5 x 10(-8) mol I-1 for bupivacaine and procaine, and 7 x 10(-8) mol I-1 for lignocaine. The ECL method was successfully applied to the determination of lignocaine in a commercial product.