Methods used in the diagnosis of acute poisonings in emergency treatment should be suitable for the identifi- cation of as many as possible toxicologically relevant compounds within a relatively short time. Furthermore they should allow a semiquantitative determination of concentrations without great additional effort. In the last decades combinations of chromatographic separation and spectrometric identification have become the most important tools for this —Systematic Toxicological Analysisii (STA). Beside gas chromatography-mass spectro- metry (GC-MS) also high performance liquid chromatography with photodiode array detection (HPLC-DAD) is increasingly used (1O5). In this paper 8 years of experience with HPLC-DAD in the toxicological department of the hospital Charité will be summarized.

        Key words: clinical toxicology, liquid chromatography, spectra library, systematic toxicological analysis.