[Histonet] Estrogen and Progesterone Receptors

[Mary Benoit]

We currently are using Dako antibodies for Estrogen and Progesterone Receptors then followed with ACIS imaging on all infiltrating breast carcinomas.  We generally put a positive control on the bottom of the same slide for each to save a little time and money.  Results are great . Fixation is at least 8 hours (never more than 18 hours) in NBF on a designated processor. My question is our pathologists are concerned when the Estrogen Receptor is strongly positive and the Progesterone is very weak or negative.  He states that the results should be approximately within 10% of each other.  Our policy is to repeat the IHC if there are no internal "normal" ducts within the sample(note that the normal ducts, when present, do stain well).  Repeated results are the same.  I've made a comparison of diagnosis for tumor types (well diff, mod diff, poorly diff, lobular, etc.) and there is an even distribution of these cases.  Does anybody have input to this
 situation?