A highly sensitive visible spectrophotometric method has been developed to determine ethamsylate in this paper, which is based on using Cu(II) as spectroscopic probe reagent. The study indicates that in the presence of SCN(-) and KNO(3), Cu(II) is reduced to Cu(I) by ethamsylate at pH 5.0, and the in situ formed Cu(I) reacts with SCN(-) to form into the white emulsion CuSCN that could be stayed upon the surface of water. According to the amount of residual Cu(II), the amount of ethamsylate can be indirectly determined. Under the optimal conditions, Beer's law is applicable in the range of 0.2-9.0 microg/mL (7.60x10(-7)-3.42x10(-5)mol/L) for aqueous standard solution of ethamsylate with linear correlation coefficient of 0.9998. The detection limit and relative standard deviation are 0.12 microg/mL and 1.5%, respectively. And the molar absorption coefficient of the indirect determination of ethamsylate is 1.0x10(5)L/mol cm. The method is successfully applied to determine ethamsylate in pharmaceutical preparations and biological samples.Copyright 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
