[Histonet] Re critical incident

[John Auld]

Lynda

How can you overdehydrate? excessive times in alcohol and xylene will
harden tissue but this is not what happened in your case.
I would not have thought that the increase in concentrations would have
made any difference to your tissues.
It is certainly worth recording somewhere what happened in case it
reoccurs.

John

John Auld FIBMS MSc
Dept of Histopathology and Clinical Cytology
Arrowe Park Hospital
Arrowe Park Road
Upton
Wirral
U.K.

Tel 0151 604 7025

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 14:25:54 -0500
From: Derek and/or Lynda Leopold <leopold <@t> mnsi.net>
Subject: [Histonet] Critical Incident?
To: histonet <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu
Message-ID: <402BD342.4040201 <@t> mnsi.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed

Hi Histonetters,
     I am hoping to get some opinion off-list from supervisors (and
anyone else who may care to comment) on an event which happened recently
in our lab.  To be as short as possible, the person who was responsible
for changing the solutions on our Tissue Tek 5 biopsy processor somehow
(PUH-leese don't ask me how) made up the first alcohol to 70% (instead
of 95%), and the second alcohol to 88% (instead of 95%).  For context,
we do a short run, 20 minutes in each of formalin, 65% formal alcohol,
then 2 changes of 95%, then 3 changes of 100% and on to xylene and
paraffin.  Now that you have the situation, I have two questions: 1)
What sorts of changes, if any,  would one expect in the biopsy tissues
(endo, cervix, etc) exposed to this miscalculated regimen ?  2) If, as
some of us surmise, this mistake in solution calculation could be linked
to biopsy tissues that were too dehydrated and brittle to be of any
diagnostic use, should that constitute a critical error/reportable mistake?
    We have apparently never experienced such terrible tissues in recent
memory, and there is some debate as to whether the low-concentration
alcohols could have been the cause.
I look forward to  your very expert opinions!
Thanks
Lynda Leopold
Harrow, Ontario