Kathy-
What do these cracks look like? Are they arranged in a parallel manner? Or do
they have the appearance of the cracks seen in dry mud?
Parallel aligned cracks are often found in overprocessed small biospies. These
small samples become hard and brittle. The impact of the tissue on the
microtome blade during aggressive facing force these cracks deep into the
tissue. With care, patience and some luck you may be able to get beyond these
cracks by soaking the blocks, facing with thin sections on a repeated basis.
What will determine whether you are successful will be whether there is enough
depth to your biopsy to allow you to get beyond the facing artifact.
If the cracks resemble dry earth, then we are looking at a fixation/processing
issue. These cracks do not appear in the tissue until the xylenes after slide
staining. If the tissues are not well fixed, then processing reagents will not
be able to fully penetrate the tissues. If possible, I would suggest you
perform retrims on your tissue and process them normally. They should have had
enough time to fix when you do your retrims, and they should be fine. In a
hospital setting, this may not be possible. You can deparaffinze and rehydrate
your tissue samples by running them through your processor's cleaning program.
Place them back in fixative for a while, then reprocess them.
I have also seen this artifcat in tissue when (due to a processor malfunction)
tissue samples were exposed to high heat during processing. Look for blood
cells being laked in the larger blood vessels (blood cells look like a
homogenous mass rather than being able to cell boundaries). Sometimes there
will be small round black precitate granules over the affected tissue areas.
You will need to determine the best course depending on the extent of the
damage. Extensive damage will probaly require retrims.
I hope this helps. Please get back with me if yoiu have any further questions.
Joe Saby, BA HT
37 years in histotechnology
From: Kathy Nelson kathyenel...@hotmail.com
To: Histonet histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu
Sent: Sun, December 19, 2010 1:25:54 AM
Subject: [Histonet] Help
Solutions for cracks in tissue microscopically esp. in tumors and BCC specimens.
Thanks
kathyenel...@hotmail.com
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