[Histonet] Acceptable way to "bake" sections onto slides?

[Gibson, Philip]

Hi

 

In our "fairly large" histopathology lab we're hoping to consolidate our
autostainers and coverslippers to only two (Sakura) machines.

In order to efficiently do this, we would need to bypass the
autostainer's oven so that multiple racks of slides can be processed
continuously without any 10-15 minute hold-ups. Therefore, we would like
our four separate microtomist teams to place freshly-cut sections on a
hotplate to "bake" for 10 minutes, before being picked up into racks and
transferred directly to xylene on the autostainer.

 

My question:

 

Do hotplates work well enough to do this? Two conflicting views in my
lab are (a) Yes, this would work in my experience, and (b) No, this
creates artifacts because water trapped underneath the sections boils
and does damage.

 

Of course, the more conventional approach would be to use ovens, but
loading and unloading an oven before the autostainer is an additional
wasteful step.

 

What do my fellow histonetters think?

 

Many Thanks

 

Phil

 

 

----------------------------------------

Phil Gibson

Senior Biomedical Scientist

Histopathology Dept

Royal Victoria Infirmary

Newcastle Upon Tyne

NE1 4LP

 

Ext. 24565

Tel. 0191 2824565

 



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