[Histonet] RE: Dako and Leica immunostainers

[Greg Dobbin]

Sally,
I think you answered your own question! You wrote: "If so, why would
someone want one of these stainers?" And yet, they sell so many! I have
found the Bond to be an excellent instrument and in my opinion it is
unrivalled in the market place. 

I have just recently spent 10 months doing extensive evaluations of
Bond, Dako and Ventana. I brought each instrument in-house to try. When
all was said and done the Bond was the best fit for my lab. Each lab
needs to evaluate what is the best fit for their particular situation
(ie number of staff, experience level of staff, volume of tests,
workflow, etc.).  

But with regard to the cost for online dewax and retreival: what is
your time worth? Doing these steps off-line means more tech time, more
opportunity for mistakes and opens the possibility of peripheral
instrumentation failing and holding everything up down the line. 

As for the cost per slide: I spent many agonizing hours going over
pricing info for all 3 instruments (trying to "uncode" the sales speak)
and in the end (by my calculations) the difference between 2 of the 3
was less than a dollar per test and the 3rd was considerably higher. I
won't say which one is which, but I will say the Bond was not the higher
of the 3.
Hope this has helped.
Cheers!
Greg  


Greg Dobbin, R.T.
Chief Technologist, Anatomic Pathology
Dept. of Laboratory Medicine,
Queen Elizabeth Hospital,
P.O. Box 6600
Charlottetown, PE    C1A 8T5
Phone: (902) 894-2337
Fax: (902) 894-2385

"And in the end it's not the years in your life
that count. It's the life in your years." 
- Abraham Lincoln


>>> "Sally Price" <sprice2003 <@t> gmail.com> 11/20/2008 7:35 PM >>>
All,
After reading this thread I just had offer my comments.  I'm not a big
fan
of systems that do the dewax and AR, primarily because it costs way too
much
to automate these steps.  I've never used the Bond, but I hear that
you've
gotta put some plastic thingy - that probably costs too much - on top
of
each slide, you gotta use their detection reagents - which probably
cost more than other companies, they charge you for empty barcoded
reagent containers, all the slides in the same tray have to use the
same
detection reagents - which means that the continuous-feed feature has
some
serious limits, it can't do double-stains, and they have less than 50
IVD-approved antbodies.  Can someone verify for me if all this issues
are
true?  If so, why would someone want one of these stainers?  The Dako
stainer is a dinosaur and with all the newre/better ones available,
they should probably take it off the market.
Cheers,
Sally

-----Original Message-----

From: Josie Britton <JCBRITTON <@t> Cheshire-Med.COM>
To: Michael Bradley <jaustin1967 <@t> gmail.com>;
Histonet <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu 
Sent: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:31 am
Subject: RE: [Histonet] Dako

Hi,
We just got the new Bond Max IHC stainer and we love it.  You just cut
the
slides dry them and place them on the Bond.  It does retrieval,
antibody
staining, and counter stain.  You just dehydrate , clear, and mount
your
coverslip.  It is easy to use.  It has 3 individual slide tray's of 10.
 You
can load more slides on the empty tray's and start a new batch while
the
others are running.  We run into the pathologist's adding more
antibodies to
the list an hour after we have run the first batch frequently, so this
feature is great.  When you add more IHC's the run time on all the
slide
tray's run times do increase, but it's better than having to wait
another
2-3 hours to put your next set of immuno's on.
Hope this helps!
Josie Britton HT
Cheshire Medical Center
580 Court Street
Keene, NH 03431

-----Original Message-----

Message: 9
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:17:52 -0500
From: godsgalnow <@t> aol.com 
Subject: Re: [Histonet] Dako
To: JCBRITTON <@t> Cheshire-Med.COM, jaustin1967 <@t> gmail.com,
    Histonet <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu 

Just another FYI...
The Biocare IntelliPath does the same thing, but has 4 trays of 10 and
it
allows you to make one of the trays?RUSH.? SO depending, on the
volume?of
IHC you do either of these machines would work out great.
Roxanne
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