[Histonet] Re: Citadel Tissue Processor

[Michelle MacVeigh-Aloni]

Hi Atoska,

We do only research and have low volume. We purchased a second hand one and used it for about a year. It works and does the job. It is much better than having to process manually but:

The alcohols evaporate like crazy! You loose a lot. It must be in a hood.
There is no heating nor vacuum. I was under the impression that there is vacuum while reading the brochure, but when the Citadel arrived, I found that it is a separate free standing unit that can be connected only with the paraffin tanks. We didn't have the room for it so we never used it and sent it back. 
There is no purge/clean cycle. You have to either purchase 2 extra buckets or find some other containers for the Xylene and the 100% which you will be using to manually wash the basket after the cassettes are out of it. They should also be in the hood.

In a year, one of the paraffin buckets burned. The service guy told me that a repair was not worth it. A new paraffin bath is about $1200.00.

Something that was good is that you only need about 1/2 gallon per station. When we had only few cassettes, we didn't even fill completely the buckets. Infiltration was fine.

Hope this helps
Michelle

USC Keck School of Medicine