Rapid and Sensitive Reverse-phase High-performance Liquid Chromatography Method for Estimation of Ketorolac in Pharmaceuticals Using Weighted Regression

A reliable, rapid and sensitive isocratic reverse phase high-performance liquid chromatography method has been developed and validated for assay of ketorolac tromethamine in tablets and ophthalmic dosage forms using diclofenac sodium as an internal standard. An isocratic separation of ketorolac tromethamine was achieved on Oyster BDS (150×4.6 mm i.d., 5 μm particle size) column using mobile phase of methanol:acetonitrile:sodium dihydrogen phosphate (20 mM; pH 5.5) (50:10:40, %v/v) at a flow rate of 1.0 ml/min. The eluents were monitored at 322 nm for ketorolac and at 282 nm for diclofenac sodium with a photodiode array detector. The retention times of ketorolac and diclofenac sodium were found to be 1.9 min and 4.6 min, respectively. Response was a linear function of drug concentration in the range of 0.01-15 μg/ml (R²=0.994; linear regression model using weighing factor 1/x²) with a limit of detection and quantification of 0.002 μg/ml and 0.007 μg/ml, respectively. The % recovery and % relative standard deviation values indicated the method was accurate and precise.