Validation of a high-performance liquid chromatography method for the determination of pancuronium in Pavulon injections

A new high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was developed for the quality control of pancuronium bromide and its degradation products. The HPLC method used a 5-μm Supelcogel ODP-50 (150×4 cm) column with acetonitrile–CH3OH–water–F3CCOOH (20.5:74.9:0.1, v/v) as the mobile phase (pH value 2.0 adjusted with trifluoroacetic acid) at a flow-rate 0.8 ml/min and UV detection at 210 nm. The Beer’s law plots were found to be linear over the concentration range 0.4–1.2 mg/ml of pancuronium bromide and 0.04–0.08 mg/ml of desacetyl degradation products (R2=0.9995). The RSD of the peak areas was 1.09% and the recovery was 102.43%. The RSD value shows good precision, acceptable accuracy and reproducibility of the new method for the determination of pancuronium bromide in presence of its desacetyl degradation products. The method is rapid and sensitive enough to be used for Pavulon injection analysis.