A point of care screen printed potentiometric sensor for therapeutic monitoring of vecuronium

The present contribution describes the design and development of a calix[6]arene-based screen printed potentiometric sensor for detection of vecuronium bromide (VEC) in biological samples at the point of care. Currently, VEC is a commonly used skeletal muscle relaxant in emergency medicine and anesthesia that is favoured among all the neuromuscular blockers to be administrated. However, in the post-anesthesia care unit, 45% of the patients could suffer from undesired ventilator effects, residual post-operative paralysis and incomplete recovery after VEC administration. Direct determination of VEC is difficult process from analytical chemistry perspective due to lack of detectable chromophore, sensitive detection techniques and complexity in isolation from biological specimens. Despite the presence of anticipated interfering ions, screen printed electrode (SPE) showed a considerable selectivity toward VEC. The proposed sensor showed a linear response over 10 mM to 1 mu M with a detection limit of 0.158 mu M and a Nernstian slope of 29.2 mV/decade. The ability of SPE to detect VEC in real biological specimens was investigated through spiking VEC at a concentration comparable to its anticipated level in human plasma (Cmax similar to 6.7 mu M). Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) is investigated by the developed screen-printed electrode showing that SPE is an excellent and promising platform.