Liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry

LC-MS/MS — definitive toxicology

Laboratory-developed method

Developed and validated in house by Clinicore. Reviewed and approved by the Medical Director before use in patient testing.

Results from a laboratory-developed method are method-specific and are not directly comparable with another laboratory’s. That is the point of it — where a cleared assay answers the question adequately, Clinicore uses one.

How it works

Definitive identification and quantitation of drugs and their metabolites. Each analyte is separated chromatographically and confirmed by a mass-to-charge transition specific to that molecule, then reported as a measured concentration against a cutoff set for that analyte — not as a presumptive positive or negative.

What this method does well

Reports a measured concentration rather than a presumptive result
Resolves a parent drug from its metabolite, so a prescribed medication is confirmed by the marker it actually produces rather than inferred
Identifies the specific drug within a class, where an immunoassay screen reports only that the class was present

Reference intervals

None. Toxicology analytes do not carry reference intervals. What the analyte page publishes is the assay cutoff — the concentration below which the analyte is reported as not detected. Therapeutic ranges published in the literature are a different kind of value, are not Clinicore's to assert, and appear only in educational content cited to the guideline.