Use of Gas Chromatography and Alcohol Dehydrogenase in a Routine Procedure for the Determination of Ethanol in Postmortem Blood

Abstract

A routine procedure for determination of ethanol in postmortem blood utilizing both gas chromatography (GC) and alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) is presented. A single analysis by each method was performed on 727 postmortem blood specimens containing ethanol. Good correlation between GC and ADH results were obtained for specimens containing ethanol In the ranges of 14100 rag% (r = 0.948) and 101–300 rag% (r = 0.934). Twenty-one specimens analyzed in triplicate by each method gave highly correlated ethanol concentrations, r = 0.997. When Wilcoxon's signed-ranks test was applied to the data, values obtained using the ADH method were found to be slightly higher than those obtained by GC, (P< 0.05).