[Histonet] Prostate Whole Mounts

[Gagnon, Eric]

Hi Allison,
We cut our prostate whole mounts on the Leica RM2255 automated microtome.  We obtained their Super Mega Cassette Clamp, (part no 140502 38967).  This clamp mounts easily onto the microtome, and holds SurgiPath SuperCassettes ( Cat No VSP59067B-BX grey in colour).  The beauty of this microtome is that the stroke is 10 mm longer than our previous Reichert-Jung 2035 microtomes we used to cut these on, I believe it is now 70 mm vertically.  In terms of slides, we use 75x38 up to 75x80 mm slides, with coverslips ranging from 35x50 to 48x65 mm, depending on specimen size.  The slides go on our Leica automated stainer, held diagonally in the basket by other slides to keep them vertical, and coverslipped by hand.

In terms of processing, we use our normal overnight processing cycle as we would for our routine surgical blocks.  These sections are well-fixed before processing, cut at 4-5 mm during crossing.  We have had some issues when the pathologist assistants couldn't get the sections this thin, but it hasn't happened often enough to use a longer/different processing cycle.  We have been getting 4-6 slides blocks per case, and we've done 35 cases in the last year. 
 
Hope this helps,
Eric Gagnon MLT
Histology Laboratory
Kingston General Hospital
Kingston, Ontario, Canada