[Histonet] B5

[Lee & Peggy Wenk]

We switched a few years ago. Hospital went mercury free, and we couldn't 
find any company in 6 states that would take waste mercury.

One common mistake when converting to a zinc formalin is to try to fix it 
the same time as the B5. Mercury binds/fixes very quickly, zinc is slower. 
It's chemistry, and there's not much you can do to make it go a whole lot 
faster. So, whatever time you fixed normally in B5, multiply it by 1.5 to 
2.0 (2 hour B5 fix will now require 3-4 hours fixation in a Zinc formalin). 
If you don't fix long enough in the zinc formalin, the tissue is going to 
have smudgy pale blue nuclei on the bone marrow. Been there, done that when 
one of the med techs insisted on fixing in the zinc formalin for the same 2 
hours as B5 because she didn't like her routine disrupted (B5 was 2 hours, 
so she insisted the zinc formalin should also be 2 hours). Once we showed 
her the difference in quality between 2 hours and 3 hours, and asked her 
which one she would like her daughter's bone marrow biopsy to look like, if 
we ever had to diagnose her for leukemia, she changed to 3 hours, and now 
the bone marrows look fine.

Peggy A. Wenk, HTL(ASCP)SLS
Beaumont Hospital
Royal Oak, MI 478073

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Pitts, Jaclyn S. (Jackie), HT(ASCP)" <Pitts.Jaclyn <@t> mayo.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2011 9:45 PM
To: <histonet <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu>
Subject: [Histonet] B5

> Hey all,
> I was just curious how many of you out there still use B5 as a fixative
> for bone marrows.
> Thank
>
> Jaclyn Pitts, HT(ASCP)
> Histotechnician
> Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology
> Mayo Clinic Rochester, MN
> E-mail: pitts.jaclyn <@t> mayo.edu
>
>
>
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