Joanne, I do not think you should expect to get perfectly uniform IHC staining in breast core biopsies every time. At our hospital, we prefer to avoid doing hormone receptor stains on breast cores because they are not as "robust" as a lumpectomy or mastectomy specimen.
The unevenness could be due to pre-analytic causes beyond your control (such as: are they placed in directly and immediately into formalin by the radiologist? Is your processing schedule optimized for small biopsies or is it a "one-size fits all" schedule for large and small specimens, etc). Occasionally, we will agree to an Oncology request to stain them but this is usually only done when they feel it is not going to be clinically beneficial to put the patient through a more invasive procedure (ie lumpectomy). Another disadvantage of looking at cores vs lump specimens is that you cannot see the "bigger picture". Perhaps there is heterogeneity in the intensity of the ER/PR expression throughout the tumor; something that is easier to discern when you can see the staining pattern across the entire cross-section of the tumor. I too use the Bond platform. If you are placing appropriate tissue controls on the same slide as the patient and these have the expected staining pattern and intensity, you may be fairly certain that the issue was (or is) pre-analytic in nature. If this is not your practice, then try re-staining new sections of the same case. If it is corrected, contact Leica Tech support to try to figure out what went wrong the first time. If it is not corrected, then you are back to suspecting a pre-analytic issue (assuming you are not seeing this uneven-ness in other IHC specimens). I strongly encourage use of tissue controls on every patient slide. Cheers, Greg -- *Greg Dobbin* 1205 Pleasant Grove Rd RR#2 York, PE C0A 1P0 *Everything in moderation...even moderation itself**!* _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet