[Histonet] RE: manual IHC staining
Mehndi, Why? Is your automation costing a lot? Your average is 76 slides/day. That is a substantial number. If your automation is costing a lot, then look for a less costly alternative, like the BioCare or Thermo Fisher (Lab Vision) instruments. Those are completely open systems that can have very low costs if you are careful choosing reagents. We do maybe 50 IF slides per day in our kidney lab and would not get rid of automation. In fact, I would only get rid of automation if we were batching slides only a couple days per week. It saves so much hands on time that only if you have extra staff and very cheap labor costs is it worth dropping. My cost calculations show that even at only 50 slides per day we spend only 10% of our total cost of the test on the Dako (Autostainer Plus, same as Lab Vision 480) automation portion (including service contract costs). The major factor is the cost of reagents. And reagent cost won't change much with manual unless you change all your reagents. But your labor costs will skyrocket. I recommend keeping automation, but evaluate your platform for excess costs. Tim Morken UCSF Pathology -Original Message- From: histonet-boun...@lists.utsouthwestern.edu [mailto:histonet-boun...@lists.utsouthwestern.edu] On Behalf Of Histology Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2013 9:47 AM To: histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu Subject: [Histonet] manual IHC staining Hi all- Does anyone out there still do manual, offline IHC staining? We currently do about 20,000 IHC slides per year and my boss would like to consider dropping the automatic stainers and doing them by hand. If you do manual staining, how long does it take, how much tech time is needed, and what about CAP inspections? Thanks in advance, Mehndi Helgren Dominion Pathology Laboratories 733 Boush St. Suite 200 Norfolk, VA 23510 757-664-7901 hi...@pathlab.us ___ 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: manual IHC staining
Wow - I can't imagine wanting to go to manual staining for 20,000 slides per year. That's about 80-100 per day. We used to do manual staining but only about 20-40 slides per day. Unless you are running a very limited panel of antibodies, you will be hopping to keep up with all the steps. I wouldn't think you would be batching all slides in one run, so you will have timers going off all the time. You or your techs will not have time to do anything else but stain, wash, apply reagents, wash, etc. You might want to do some trial runs for timing, work flows etc before you make the decision to ditch the autostainer. I would also consider consistency of staining , correct antibodies being added to the correct slides, and amount of reagents (no matter how careful you are, you will put more on than the stainer). Just my thoughts. We do 30-35,000 slides per year, we have three Ventana Ultras and they are busy all the time. and so are my 2 techs. Sue Sue Hunter, Supervisor Advanced Diagnostics Beaumont Health System Royal Oak MI 248-898-5146 shun...@beaumont.edu -Original Message- From: histonet-boun...@lists.utsouthwestern.edu [mailto:histonet-boun...@lists.utsouthwestern.edu] On Behalf Of Histology Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2013 12:47 PM To: histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu Subject: [Histonet] manual IHC staining Hi all- Does anyone out there still do manual, offline IHC staining? We currently do about 20,000 IHC slides per year and my boss would like to consider dropping the automatic stainers and doing them by hand. If you do manual staining, how long does it take, how much tech time is needed, and what about CAP inspections? Thanks in advance, Mehndi Helgren Dominion Pathology Laboratories 733 Boush St. Suite 200 Norfolk, VA 23510 757-664-7901 hi...@pathlab.us ___ 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
