A high-performance liquid chromatographic assay using ion-pair reverse-phase system was developed for the separation of acebutolol and acebutolol acetyl metabolite in plasma. A ion-pair reversephase system consisting of an ODS-bonded silica column and a mixture of 20% $CH_3CN$, 0.1% $H_3PO_4$, 0.035 M heptanesulfonic acid and 0.005 M tetrabutylammonium hydrogen sulfate as the mobile phase were used. Triamterene was employed as an internal standard. Based on 0.2 ml of plasma, the detection limits were 10.4 ng/ml for acebutolol and 10.3 ng/ml of acebutolol acetyl metabolite at the signal-to-noise ratio of 3:1.