Re: [Histonet] Two Patient Identifiers on slides
We are writing path #, date of birth patient initials as identifiers. Michelle From: Jean Wood jw...@fairchildmed.org To: histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2013 2:37 PM Subject: [Histonet] Two Patient Identifiers on slides Hello Histonetters, Recently we started utilizing a slide labeling component that is built into our AP Easy LIS system and has accession number, levels and patients first and last name when labels are printed out. Dymo does not have a chemically resistant label (we have a Dymo 450 printer) and we have been putting the labels on AFTER the slides are stained and cover slipped. In the meantime, the HT is writing in pencil the accession # and levels on the slide which is then covered up with the permanent label after cover slipping. Our Lab Manager is worried that we are not compliant as we do not have two patient identifiers on throughout the whole process (she wants us to write patient names on slides in pencil (before staining) and then cover that up with the pre-printed label after staining. 1. What is everyone else doing? 2. Have any of you found a chemically resistant label compatible with the Dymo labeler? Jean Wood BS, HT Fairchild Medical Center Pathology Dept. Ph:530.841.6243 Fax:530.841.6232 jw...@fairchildmed.orgmailto:jw...@fairchildmed.org ___ 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
[Histonet] Formalin
Good day Histoland! Can anyone that is using a formalin substitute that is happy with the quality of fixation please share! Thank you. Michelle Moore SRMC St. Thomas USVI ___ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet
Re: [Histonet] non-xylene processing
We also de-wax slides in a similar way as the procedure listed below. We also use a waterbath and dish soap (Dawn)/rinse agent method. (Rinse agent (Cascade) helps with water tension.) The key is water temp. it has to be over 90 C in order for it to work. Obviously if you de-wax non-chemical you do not have the alcohols on the stain line either = huge cost savings all the way around, not to mention the healthier work area! Michelle Moore SRMC St. Thomas, USVI From: e...@pigsqq.org e...@pigsqq.org To: histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2013 1:01 PM Subject: [Histonet] non-xylene processing We now have a no-xylene method start to finish We have a Midea (Mei Di) 800W manual dial microwave oven that we have rigged with a K-type metal shielded thermocouple that goes in through a slightly enlarged vent hole in the internal guide housing. The internal length of the thermocouple wire is wrapped with heavy duty aluminum foil to block microwaves from creating silly currents in the thermocouple wire. PT100 RTD's are great for water baths but microwaves zap them in seconds. The hysteresis temp controller switches a 12v relay which drives a 10A 240V relay that supplies power to a plain socket for the microwave oven. The microwave oven is a manual dial type so just cutting the power turns it off and on quite effectively. A low power (% time) setting is enough. High settings give too much overshoot. The 12V DC circuit allows us to eliminate problems with the back EMF from the MW oven and 240V relay. We have a diode that blocks the DC back EMF. Cut in well fixed tissues - fixed in formalin or Bouins. Microwave Cassettes in 100% Isopropanol at 60C - 10 min Repeat with fresh IsopOH another 10 min. Put cassettes in a fired clay earthenware pot - Pour in paraffin heated to 75C in a metal teapot. Microwave 10 min at 80C Pour out paraffin into open metal pot. Repeat above 10 min. Pour out paraffin to metal pot. Take cassettes to the embedding station, Embed, ice, trim, section. Bake 20 min on slide warmer at 60C We dewax with 95C tap water heated in a tank. A PT100 RTD drives a hysteresis controller. Also we use 12 V relay switched by the controller to drive the 240V relay that switches the heating element on and off. We have an electric solenoid valve and a waterproof switch to control the water flow when we need the hot water. The hot water flows into a 1 L pot with silicone rubber handles. We add 20 gm of a dishwasher detergent powder made in Shanghai. (It's similar to Cascade. We dont like Finish very much as sold in China). We put in the slide racks after the water and detergent are in the pot. We treat for one minute, remove the slides, pour out the water and repeat for another 1 minute soak. Next comes a 30 sec soak in clear hot tap water and a 1 min rinse in plain running tap water. Then 0.5% Periodic acid 10 min Tap water rinse 1 min Distilled water 1 min Harris Hematoxylin 4 min Rinse tap water 1 min 1% HCl in 70% EtOH 30 sec Rinse and blue in tap water 1 min Eosin/Biebrich Scarlet 30 sec Rinse tap water 1 min Rinse Distilled Water 30 sec Dry with hair dryer Coverslip. Our mounting medium contains xylene as a clearing agent/diluent. That's the only xylene in the normal runs. We like this method because it is quick, environmentally friendly, and people friendly and it produces very lovely slides that we can read and photograph for our reports. A major part of our work is diagnosis of pig diseases, so the ability to give same-day histopath results on formalin fixed samples is valuable to our customers. We do still use xylene to dewax formalin fixed paraffin block sections that are used for PCR presently, but we think we can use hot soapy water for that also with some larger tubes. We heat the teapot on an induction stove. We have that rigged for thermal control also and a PT100 in through the lid in the teapot. It is much trickier controlling the induction stove, because they have many built-in safety features and you can't just turn one off and on again at the mains outlet. What you have to do is solder in leads to a relay across the on-off push button, and rig the relay for momentary contact by including a capacitor that is charged for on and discharged for off, with a momentary contact at each time faking a key press. This lets us heat our paraffin teapot accurately with induction stove efficiency and automatic temp control. E. Wayne Johnson Enable Ag Tech Beijing ___ 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
[Histonet] RE: Michelle Moore
http://montrealbarbell.com/nnlxwbn/cgia/pfstr/ucw.htm Best regards, Michelle Moore ___ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet
Re: [Histonet] Voice Recognition Systems
VoiceBrook is an awesome pathology voice recognition system! We use Meditech and it does not require an interface. Michelle From: Ann Specian thisis...@aol.com To: histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2013 6:37 PM Subject: [Histonet] Voice Recognition Systems I am looking for a voice recognition system for the gross room. It needs to be a system that will interface with our LIS. Does anyone have any recommendations in regard to vendors? Thank you, Ann Specian ___ 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
[Histonet] Path reports
Good afternoon Histoland! Anyone that is using Meditech AP module 5.6 please grace me with your method of transcription/dictation for your Pathologist. We just went live this year and it seems we have stepped back in time with this system. The voice recognition system we use in Radiology is not combatible with Meditech..ughhh! Thanks in advance for any help or direction! Michelle Moore Schneider Regional Medical Center 9048 Sugar Estate St. Thomas Virgin Islands 00802 ___ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet
Re: [Histonet] Colloidal Iron Staining
At what thickness are you cutting the subject tissue? I have had challenges in the past with false negatives (on subject tissue not controls) turned out we were cutting special stain slides too thin. Bump it up a notch or two see if that helps :) From: amanda porath porathama...@gmail.com To: Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu Cc: amanda porath porathama...@gmail.com Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 9:39 AM Subject: [Histonet] Colloidal Iron Staining I have been working on validating our colloidal iron stain for quite some time and am not getting the results our Docs want to see. I am using small intestine as the control and the goblet cells light up beautifully, however the subject tissue does not. It is my understanding that this stain is most useful to distinguish a chromophobe from an oncocytoma kidney tumor. I have seen the beautiful text book pictures...in the text books, and that is what our pathologists want to see on the slides Is anyone out there doing colloidal iron, and if so, would you share your protocols, and explain how your staining looks. I am using the Muller-Mowry technique with in house made reagents. We are considering trying a purchased kit, but wanted to pose this question to fellow histotechs first. Perhaps I am overlooking something simple. Any feedback is most welcome. Many Thanks, Amanda Porath, HT(ASCP) Bassett Medical Center Cooperstown, NY 13326 ___ 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
Re: [Histonet] RE: air drying special stain slides rather than
Yes Rene :) US Virgin Islands is still going as green as we can! Thank you for this gift! We have been de-waxing slides off line for over 14 months now ;TJC and CMS inspections 100% success during this transition. I was able to report to our PI department that we have experienced a cost reduction from $83.01/100 slides down to 4 pennies! My tech's are breathing in much deeper :) and excited to continue becoming as green as possible! Best Regards- Michelle Moore Histopathology Supervisor/Medical Examiner Ofc Schneider Regional Medical Center St. Thomas, USVI, 00802 From: Rene J Buesa rjbu...@yahoo.com To: E. Wayne Johnson e...@pigsqq.org Cc: 'histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu' histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu; Mayer, Toysha N tnma...@mdanderson.org Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2012 10:13 AM Subject: Re: [Histonet] RE: air drying special stain slides rather than EWayne (et al): So, there you have it! He (or she) who still uses xylene in the histology lab is just because he (or she) has decided to do so! At this moment what you describe is standard procedure for several private labs in the US and the US Virgin Islands, Canada, Russia and Spain. Besides dewaxing with dishwasher soap and air drying before cover-slipping, you can also eliminate xylene from tissue processing by just following the instructions outlinedin the articles I sent. you. Try to contact as many colleagues as you can and spread the word: xylene is out of our lives, as long as we want to. Thank you for the information René J. From: E. Wayne Johnson e...@pigsqq.org To: Rene J Buesa rjbu...@yahoo.com Cc: Mayer,Toysha N tnma...@mdanderson.org; 'histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu' histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2012 9:49 AM Subject: Re: [Histonet] RE: air drying special stain slides rather than Dishwashing machines are not at all common in China even in Beijing so we could not find dishwasher detergent nearby. But we took a bus and subway ride toward the city center to Zhongguancun (the computer district) and found a Carrefour's (Jia Le Fu 家乐福) that had one brand of powdered detergent Finish (Reckett Benckiser). Finish was formerly called Electrasol. Actually I was a bit afraid of Finish. If I had known it was the same thing as the familiar Electrasol, I would not have had any concerns. Anyway, we took the Finish powder back to the lab where we had a covered water bath waiting at 90C. I mixed 40 grams in with 2L of tap water and we followed the protocol Rene' sent with some test tissues from some pigs we examined a few days ago (lung, liver, heart, spleen, kidney, gut). We heated the detergent solution on an induction stove and poured in into some square glass jars in the water bath. The procedure took the paraffin right off. We did an HE and dried the slide in the 60C oven after a water wash to clean up after Eosin. Ver-r-ry nice result. Jane tried the technique then by herself with 3 more slides including one slide with some honking big pieces of pig cerebellum. The sections all stayed put on the slides. Sometimes we can lose most of the cerebellum in processing, so we think it is a good demonstration that section loss is not going to be much of a problem. The stain was a Harris hematoxylin regressed with 1% HCl. We blued some with tap water and some with Scott's. I sort of prefer the plain tap water bluing. Our Eosin is an Eosin/Biebrich Scarlet (Acid Red 66)/Orange G that we make up. We usually use a treatment in alcoholic Picric Acid to get rid of formalin pigment but we omitted that step today and the slides turned out well. Indeed these pigs were a field necropsy and the formalin was simple 10% unbuffered formalin in plain local farm tap water, but there were only some traces of formalin pigment. We are wondering if perhaps the detergent is taking out some of the formalin pigment for us. We got a few white paraffin spots on one slide but even that would not be an issue in reading or photographing the slide. Jane thinks she can tweak the procedure to eliminate the paraffin spots. Jane's opinion on the procedure? She will be bottling up all of the xylenes and alcohols and storing them away first thing tomorrow morning. This fixes a big problem for us because the histolab is on the first floor along with some offices. We do our work under a fume hood and we are careful, but we had an incident where students left containers of xylene uncapped outside the hood overnight in hot weather vaporizing a large amount of xylene into the hallway. Not cool. We moved the tissue processor and autostainer to a remoter spot on the 4th floor but the water quality issues there made our autostainer a problem. We can now bring our autostainer back and set it up for special and routine stains. The procedure with detergent from beginning to end is significantly shorter than the xylene
[Histonet] Request from the Caribbean!
Good Afternoon Histonetters! I have started to build a control block bank and wow do I need some help! I know that it sounds ridiculous for anyone living on an island in the Caribbean to have a complaint, but wow is it hard to find good control blocks from such a limited source! I use to belong to the fantastic Michigan Society that has an awesome sharing program with tissue blocks. I have worked on the lovely island of St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands for going on five years and no longer belong to any Stateside Societies. I can offer a thank you and an invitation to bring the blocks down personally for a visit to the Caribbean! I am in need of fungus, AFB and H. Pylori. Any help would be fantastic and very appreciated! Michelle Moore Histopathology/Cytology Supervisor Schneider Regional Medical Center 9048 Sugar Estate, ST. Thomas, US VI 00802 340-776-8311x1047 mlmo...@srmedicalcenter.org ___ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet
