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- Feb 6, 2013
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A good hospital will have a GC/MS and technicians to convert blood samples to derivatised samples for analysis.
Yes, a good hospital will have GC/MS resources available. I run two such machines at my job. I doubt however that if the OP was informed 'LSD' that it was done via GC/MS. You've got to have time available to a) process the samples into injectable form, b) have the proper reagents, chemicals and supplies to do this, c) have a working verified method in place to be capable of running the samples and d) have the appropriate column/column packing material available.
Even if all of those conditions are met, you'd have to have room in a sample queue available to be able to run this specific sample (In the last 9 days I've been overworked running 160 samples and if I was told to run 1 sample for something I'm not set up to do I would say no....if overruled, I would say the results are not going to be reliable if pushed). Even if I wanted to do this, I would have to stop the GC, switch columns, run a standard for verification and then run the new sample. Is it possible? Yes, sure.
More likely the presence of an indole alkaloid was 'suspected' via a multi panel drug test. These are extremely unreliable. But in terms of a 'rapid' assessment done within a few hours of admission I don't see many other possibilities.
Just my 2 cents.
Tom