Summary:Background:The increase in alcohol testing for forensic purposes and the related increased workload for the toxicology laboratory has been the subject of intense research and debate. The aim of our study was to compare the performance of two analytical methods for the detection of alcohol in whole blood and serum: a rapid automated alcohol dehydrogenase method and the gold standard method head-space gas chromatography (HS-GC). We evaluated the analytical and diagnostic performances of these techniques.Methods:To compare the two technologies, ethanol was detected by the rapid automated alcohol dehydrogenase method followed by the HS-GC method in a total of 150 blood samples.Results:Both methods showed good analytical performance and produced similar results. The rapid automated alcohol dehydrogenase method was as effective for the rapid quantification of serum ethanol as the HS-GC method.Conclusions:In recent years, after new legal requirements adopted by Western governments, and under the pressure of cost containment, toxicology laboratories have moved to new methods to detect alcohol abuse in innovative matrices. The diagnostic efficiency of the rapid automated alcohol dehydrogenase method was compared with that of the gold standard procedure using diagnostic and economic parameters. Although analysis of authentic positive blood specimens gave results that were slightly different, and in view of the fact that gas chromatography is time consuming and expensive, the rapid automated alcohol dehydrogenase method for alcohol quantification may be considered as a suitable alternative to the conventional laboratory method, HS-GC, especially for negative samples.