Hi:
There is one thing you might try to make frozen brain sections more than
acceptable.
You can freeze the tissue in liquid nitrogen vapor (LNV) (not directly
into liquid nitrogen), let the tissue equilibrate to cryostat
temperature, and then cut the sections.
The histology is almost as good as a paraffin section.
This is assuming that the technique fits the time frame within which you
must arrive at a diagnosis.
Also we ourselves do not use frozen sections to screen brains
diagnostically. We use paraffin sections from the formalin fixed half of
the brain.
We send the LNV frozen blocks to investigators who cut sections from the
frozen blocks for their research.
If you would like the details, you can contact one of the following
individuals who do this routinely at our brain bank, to see if this
protocol is appropriate for your needs.
George Tejada
617-855-2646
gtej...@mclean.org
Louis Fernandes
617-855-2636
lfernan...@mclean.harvard.edu
Good luck.
I hope this information helps.
Tim Wheelock
Assistant Director, Neuropathology
Instructor In Neuroanatomy
Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center
203 Mailman Research Center
McLean Hospital
Belmont MA 02478
Phone: 617-855-3592
Fax: 617-855-3199
Robert Richmond wrote:
You guys tell your pathologists to listen to Dr. Hessler - he taught
me how to do these preparations, and the basics of interpreting them,
when I did a locum tenens for him at the Medical College of Georgia
(in Augusta) 6 years ago. I did a lot of them when I got a full time
job at a place that did a lot of neurosurgical pathology, a year
later.
Bob Richmond
Samurai Pathologist
Knoxville TN
*********************
There is nothing you can do to make brain frozen sections acceptable.
Your Pathologists need to learn how to read smears, or just accept
being wrong 50% of the time. An educated guess based on the imaging is
more accurate than frozen sections on intra-axial primary brain
tumors.
Richard B Hessler, MD
Chief of Pathology
Erlanger Medical Center
Chattanooga, TN
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