ESI-LC/MS Method Development and Validation for the Determination of Some Selected Antibiotics in Hospital Wastewater

For the last decade, significant attention has been paid to the occurrence, bioaccumulation and fate of drugs in effluent hospital water. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop and validate analytical method to identify and quantify the antibiotics tetracycline HCl, (Tetra) doxycycline, (Doxy), ampicillin trihydrate (Ampi), amoxicillin trihydrate (Amoxi) and cephalexin monohydrate (Cefalex). The LCMS instrument used was equipped with with C18 column, (150 mm length x 4.6 mm inner diameter x5 um particle size). The mobile phase was acetonitrile/formic acid (1%) under gradient elution mode. The MS employs ESI unit and quadrupole mass analyzer. The analysis time was less than 15 min. The method was validated in terms of linearity, precision, accuracy, robustness, limit of detection and limit of quantitation, specificity, stability and excellent results were obtained.