For really difficult tissues such as bone, cartilage and perhaps nails I make a 5% solution of elmers glue in dih20 and dip regular uncoated slides in the glue, let them air dry. Use the glue coated slides to pick up sections, just dipping in the water bath seems to activate the glue enough to help the sections stay on during staining. Dry the sections picked up on the glue coated slides in a 60dc oven overnight if possible or I use a slide warmer and lay them flat and dry at 55dc (that is as high as my slides warmer goes) for several hours.
Good luck, Patsy Patsy Ruegg, HT(ASCP)QIHC IHCtech, LLC Fitzsimmons BioScience Park 12635 Montview Blvd. Suite 215 Aurora, CO 80010 P-720-859-4060 F-720-859-4110 email pru...@ihctech.net website www.ihctech.net IHC Resource Group www.ihcrg.org -----Original Message----- From: histonet-boun...@lists.utsouthwestern.edu [mailto:histonet-boun...@lists.utsouthwestern.edu] On Behalf Of Clare Thornton Sent: Friday, July 24, 2009 9:31 AM To: 'histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu' Subject: [Histonet] GMS-Fungus on nails We do a GMS for fungus on all nails we receive. We often have a difficult time keeping the nail tissue on the slide. We've tried baking for long periods, pre-treating in formalin, using silane slides, with no luck. Even when the nails cut relatively easily we still lose it, and end up running several GMS stains before we might get a speck or two of tissue we can look at. We use the Artisan stainer for our specials. We are really not interested in performing the GMS manually, due to volume and turn around time restrictions. Any suggestions? Clare J. Thornton, HTL(ASCP) Assistant Histology Supervisor Dahl-Chase Diagnostic Services 417 State Street, Suite 540 Bangor, ME 04401 cthorn...@dahlchase.com _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet