Abstract

Background: Individualized parenteral nutrition requires tailor-made preparation in hospital pharmacy followed by suitable quality control, including electrolytic content determination within complex and variable admixtures, containing up to 50 ingredients.

Materials and Methods: An analytical tool has been developed to simultaneously quantify four major electrolytes in parenteral in parenteral nutrition mixtures (i.e., sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium) using microwave plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (MP-AES). A comparison with reference inducted coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) was conducted. Calibration standard solutions ranged between 0.2 to 5.0 mg.L-1 for sodium, potassium and calcium and 0.1 to 2.5 mg.L-1 for magnesium. Wavelengths used were respectively 422.6 nm, 517.2 nm, 766.4 nm and 589.5 nm for calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium, respectively. Accuracy profiles were used for the validation protocol.

Results and Conclusion: The analytical protocol using MP-AES demonstrated high throughput and good sensitivity, thus enabling efficient quality control of manufactured individualized parenteral nutrition mixtures.

Keywords: MP-AES, ICP-AES, parenteral nutrition mixtures, accuracy profile, coupled plasma, microwave plasma.