A method employing micellar electrokinetic chromatography in combination with
near-
field thermal lens detection (NF-TLD) was developed for the rapid simultaneousdetermination of etoposide phosphate and etoposide inhuman blood plasma, taking teniposide as internal standard. The method developed allows the baseline separation of the solutes of interest from each other and frompotential interfering matrix constituents within 4 min. TheNF-TLD device employed permits detection of solutesabsorbing electromagnetic
radiation at
![](/images/gifchars/lambda.gif)
= 257 nm infused-silica capillaries with 75-
![](/images/entities/mgr.gif)
m i.d. via the
near-
fieldthermal lens effect with LODs of 100
![](/images/entities/mgr.gif)
g L
-1 for etoposidephosphate and 170
![](/images/entities/mgr.gif)
g L
-1 for etoposide. Comparison ofthe performance of this detector to the performance of acommercial absorption spectrometric detector working at
![](/images/gifchars/lambda.gif)
= 257 nm showed a substantial improvement in detection limits (up to 60-fold improvement) for the
near-
fieldthermal lens detector.