[Histonet] Benchmark Ultra

[Troutman, Kenneth A]

Hello,

We currently use a Benchmark Ultra and it is worth several XTs.  There are some features about it that you should know about before you start a run.  What we currently do in our lab is load all of the antibodies we are likely to run every day.  This can be troublesome if you run the same 30 antibodies every day (unless you have more than one Ultra, then it is much easier).  We currently only run 30 total antibodies on our Ventana platform and of those 30 we run 10 or 12 every day.  When we come in, we pull a list of stains for the AM run off the computer and we have a good idea if we need to load something less common along with the list of 12 more common antibodies and a detection kit.  For the next run, if we have already started a run and we need to add an antibody, we will be forced to use the "Landing Zone" feature.  Using this, we are able to load the missing antibodies/reagents and remove what we don't need.

With regard to the "important" or "unimportant" cases, you can flag them with the blue LED, (which looks really cool, by the way...) so that you know visually which cases you are looking for without having to hover over a position on the computer.  As far as  loading important cases after unimportant cases, I don't think I can offer any advice there.  The instrument is essentially 30 individual stainers and you can choose whether or not to load the slides.  We don't really encounter this issue because of the way we have structured our workflow, but then again, we have enhanced our workflow based upon the capabilities of the instrumentation that we use.

I hope this has helped.  If there are any other questions, feel free to email me.

Ashley Troutman BS, HT(ASCP) QIHC
Vanderbilt University Histopathology
1301 Medical Center Drive TVC 4532
Nashville, TN  37232


Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2010 19:37:25 +0100
From: "Gudrun Lang" <gu.lang <@t> gmx.at>
Subject: [Histonet] benchmark ultra and continuous workflow
To: <histonet <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu>
Message-ID: <B646F3F46AF8408CAFC5B4887D9488FA <@t> dielangs.at>
Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="us-ascii"

Hi Benchmark Ultra users!



I would like to hear of your experiences with the continuous workflow of
this instrument. Does it really make life easier or even more complicated?

I think of handling one slide every few minutes after the staining is
completed and of the problems, that occur when the stainer is started with
"unimportant" cases and the later coming "important" cases have not enough
place to complete them in time.



Gudrun Lang