Recent progress in the determination of volatile impurities in pharmaceuticals

We review and discuss recent developments and the main trends in the determination of volatile impurities in drugs, with literature references and applications. We present an overview of regulatory and pharmacopeial status and trends. The techniques described are direct injection, static headspace and solid-phase microextraction (SPME) gas chromatography (GC) together with some gravimetric and thermogravimetric applications. Relevant research provided solutions to all the main challenges in static headspace GC techniques. SPME was extensively used, mainly for identification purposes.