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 μg/mL in blood. The linear function was y=0.313 6 x-0.006 8 with the correlation coefficient of 0.999 7. The precision of intra-day and inter-day were less than 4.8% and the lower limit of detection of propofol was 0.005 μg/mL. Propofol concentration of blood was 0.14 μg/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.

Key words: forensic toxicology, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, propofol, blood