[Histonet] Re: mercurochrome for biopsy marking

[Robert Richmond]

Indeed, we've discussed the use of Mercurochrome (merbromin) for
marking small biopsy specimens several times.

Merbromin contains an enormous amount of mercury, and using it will
contaminate your system with mercury - same issue as B-5 fixative.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned Mercurochrome as a
patent medicine several years ago, and merbromin is no longer
available in this form in the USA (or, I think, anywhere).

You can mark specimens with eosin. One of my locum tenens clients - as
I recently posted - uses the safranin solution used in the
conventional Gram stain (as done on smears, not tissue sections) for
marking small specimens, and I have been very much pleased with the
results - much better recovery of very small specimens by the
embedder. As all of our eyes age, this is really worth doing.

Bob Richmond
Samurai Pathologist
Knoxville TN