[Histonet] bone perfusion

[Jean-Martin Lapointe]

I don't think it's possible to dissect the whole jaw bone fresh and then perfuse it, since the jaw gets its blood supply from several arteries, and by dissecting the various vessels in the surrounding tissue you're making a pressure perfusion pretty much impossible.  I would think that the best approach for perfusing the jaw would be to do a regional perfusion via the carotids, which will fix the whole head. Then you've got the mess of dissecting the jaw from tissue that is formalin-fixed. 
If they are looking for a specific site in the jaw, the other option to avoid perfusion would be to cut the segment of interest with a bone saw and fix that segment by ordinary immersion - since this opens up the bone cortex, the tissue should fix properly.


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Jean-Martin Lapointe, DMV, MS, dACVP
AccelLAB Inc
 
 

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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:46:13 -0400
From: Derek Papalegis <derek.papalegis <@t> tufts.edu>
Subject: [Histonet] bone perfusion
To: histonet <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu
Message-ID: <485A9B65.8090400 <@t> tufts.edu>
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Does anyone have experience with perfusion of large bones? I have an 
investigator that works mainly with pig jaw bones and wants to know if 
there is anyway to perfuse them. Regular formalin fixation has not given 
them the results that they need so she is looking for other ways to fix 
the bones. If there is no way to perfuse large bones, are there any 
other protocols to formalin fix these that someone can send to me?

Thanks for your help
Derek

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