A rapid, simple, and accurate method for the determination of kanamycin and dibekacin in serum by use of high-pressure liquid chromatography is described. The serum proteins were precipitated with 3.5% perchloric acid containing sodium octanesulfonate. After centrifugation, a sample of the supernatant was directly injected into the chromatograph. The determination of kanamycin and dibekacin was performed by a combination of reverse-phase, ion-pair chromatography, postcolumn derivatization with o-phthalaldehyde, and fluorescence detection. The correlation coefficients with fluorescence polarization immunoassay were 0.996 for kanamycin and 0.957 for dibekacin.