[Histonet] Processing debate

Tue Jan 30 10:01:37 CST 2007

I totally agree with Rene.  Years ago, we used Technicon processors, the mono, duo & ultra.  They were certainly the best thing since sliced bread for those times.  I can remember the old Lipshaw too!  That took alot of muscle pulling & pushing the baskets back to the formalin station!  We would have to empty the cassettes from the formalin container the pathologist placed them into and line them up in numerical order.  This was done to ensure the priority bx's came out 1st and that all the following cases were together and placed into the basket in order of importance.  This took time at the end of the day, but it saved a considerable amount of time in the morning trying to line all the cases together. Then they color coded the cassettes to distinguish the type of cases.  Those color coded cassettes & baskets were a God's send.  

  The new equipment processes tissue so efficiently with heat & vacuum, you don't have to worry about the flow of solutions penetrating the tissues.  Unless of course, they are so thick they are squeezed into the cassettes.  Even a Divine spirit couldn't help that.  Although, the new cassettes that Sakura has developed, puts the ball back into the PA or pathologists court.

  There is enough "Chaos" in this world!  I feel there is no place for it in the laboratory environment.     

    Akemi Allison-Tacha BS, HT(ASCP)HTL
  President
  Phoenix Lab Consulting & Staffing
  Specializing in Histology, IHC & TMA
  Madison, WI
  Cell: (925)788-0900
  E-mail: akemiat3377 <@t> yahoo.com

  Rene J Buesa <rjbuesa <@t> yahoo.com> wrote:
  Fear the word "random", in histology is almost synonym with "caos".There is absolutely no logic or benefit from placing the cassettes at random.
If you use a cassetting log the sequencial and orderly manner of placing the cassettes following the log order is the way of doing things.
You can always know where your cassettes are and at the embedding step you can follow the same sequency and easily determine if all the cassettes were processed and embeded.
It is absolutely illogical to place anything at random (unless you are selecting something for an experimental design that requires that type of selection!).
The only "logical" explanation to your initial question is that it stems from the pathologist's lazyness that prefers to throw the cassettes in the container and letting the histotech to try to organize what should not have been disorganized in the first place.
René J.

GMartin <@t> marshallhospital.org wrote:
We presently process with a Tissue Tek Vip 2000. Our pathologist cut
the tissue in. the debate is this ... one side says that the cassettes
must be placed in a container of formalin to float at random before being
placed into the Vip 2000 basket.
The other side of the debate says that the tissue cassettes can be
placed in order directly into the basket that is submerged in formalin.
Can the group shine any light on this so far civil debate :)

Thanks
Gary Martin
El Dorado Pathology
California

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