Quantification of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in pharmaceutical dosage forms, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) using C18 reversed-phase columns remains the dominant approach however, existing reviews typically focus either on green solvent substitution or on column chemistry without systematically comparing practical method parameters across diverse formulations. 93 published RP-HPLC Amethods that exclusively employ C18 columns for API quantification in pharmaceutical dosage forms are uniquely compiled and comparatively analyzed by this review. In this review, key operational parameters including mobile-phase composition, buffer systems, flow rate, column dimensions, detection wavelength, and retention time were extracted and evaluated to identify methodological trends related to cost effectiveness, efficiency and green analytical chemistry. Quantitative assessment reveals that simple aqueous buffers (predominantly phosphate or ammonium acetate systems) combined with methanol or acetonitrile are relied upon by the majority of reported methods, with many achieving retention times below 10 min and moderate flow rates (0.5–1.5 mL/min), thereby reducing solvent consumption and analysis time. The findings are demonstrated by thoughtfully optimized C18-based methods that can maintain analytical performance while minimizing operational costs and environmental impact. By providing a structured, application-driven comparison of real-world pharmaceutical assays, analytical practicality is bridged with sustainability considerations and guidance is offered for developing efficient, economical, and greener HPLC methods.
Jan et al. (Thu,) studied this question.