[Histonet] Re: Need help with Brain Tumor FS

[Robert Richmond]

Theresa asks about technique for cutting brain tumor frozen sections
and Tony Henwood replies >>Are your samples received swimming in
saline? I would be confident this is your problem.<<

Definitely worth a try. With gliomas, crush preparations are extremely
useful - take a bit of the tumor and crush it between two slides (not
the same as doing an ordinary cytologic imprint, though these are
sometimes useful also, particularly with pituitary tumors.) The
pathologist needs to know how to interpret all of these modalities.
Where I was in my full time job, we'd typically pass the frozen
sections around to every pathologist in the house (there were five of
us) and we often wound up sending the sections to a nearby consultant
anyway.

But intraoperative diagnosis of brain tumors is perfectly terrifying,
particularly if (like me) the pathologist is inadequately trained in
surgical neuropathology. I think that your pathologists are unloading
some of this anxiety on you. Believe me, it's hard not to.

Bob Richmond
Samurai Pathologist
Knoxville TN