[Histonet] Re: Lymph node fixative/enhance solutions

[Marshall Terry Dr, Consultant Histopathologist]

Our associated teaching hospital uses xylene to clear the fat for nodes.
Has anybody experience of this?

Terry

-----Original Message-----
From: histonet-bounces <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu
[mailto:histonet-bounces <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu] On Behalf Of Robert
Richmond
Sent: 11 September 2007 18:53
To: histonet <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu
Subject: [Histonet] Re: Lymph node fixative/enhance solutions

Cindi Robinson, HT (ASCP) in South Dakota asks:

>>Our pathologists would like us to start using a solution to help
with the dissection and identification of lymph nodes at gross. - We do
use Pen-Fix but it doesn't dissolve the fat like the paths would like.<<

And Dana Dittus at Polysciences notes:
>>Polysciences,Inc manufactures Hartmanns Fixative which turns lymph
nodes white. For more info see www.polysciences.com   <<

It's easy and cheap to prepare Davidson's fixative (same as Hartmann's
fixative) - mix 3 parts water, 3 parts reagent alcohol, 2 parts strong
(37%) formalin, not the buffered kind, and 1 part glacial acetic acid.
Color it with eosin if you want to.

When Dr. William Hartmann (later the chair of the American Board of
Pathology) was at Johns Hopkins in the early 1960's, Dr. Victor McCusick
(the medical geneticist, later chair of medicine at Hopkins) asked him
to introduce the fixative for Barr bodies (sex chromatin
bodies) that Moore and Barr had specified in their original articles on
Barr bodies around 1954. Moore and Barr specified "modified Davidson's
fixative", which Bill Hartmann introduced. It came into rather
widespread use at Hopkins, and Hartmann's name stuck to it. I think the
name should not be used, because of possible disastrous confusion with
Hartmann's solution, lactated Ringer's solution, introduced into
pediatric practice in the 1930's by Dr. Alexis Hartmann Sr. at
Washington University in St.Louis. Dr. Alexis Hartmann was one of my
clinical teachers, right before he retired around 1964 (sorry about all
this name dropping).

John Kiernan and I discussed Davidson's fixative in this forum several
years ago. He noted that it is not really a rational formula. He hoped
to have the time to research the fixative in Davidson's papers, since it
seems never to have been published.

Getting back to the actual subject, I've used Dissect Aid (Decal
Corporation) with good results - got a bottle of it on the shelf right
now, in fact. In my brief experience with Penn-Fix, it did not disclose
lymph nodes well.

Let me support your pathologists very strongly in this endeavor. Just
one positive lymph node upstages a colon cancer and makes chemotherapy
mandatory. And in colon cancer, those postive lymph nodes can be the
size of pinheads.

Bob Richmond
Samurai Pathologist
Knoxville TN

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