[Histonet] RE: manual IHC staining

[Sue Hunter]

Wow - I can't imagine wanting to go to manual staining for 20,000 slides per year.  That's about 80-100 per day.  We used to do manual staining but only about 20-40 slides per day.  Unless you are running a very limited panel of antibodies, you will be hopping to keep up with all the steps.  I wouldn't think you would be batching all slides in one run, so you will have timers going off all the time.  You or your techs will not have time to do anything else but stain, wash, apply reagents, wash, etc.
You might want to do some trial runs for timing, work flows etc before you make the decision to ditch the autostainer.
I would also consider consistency of staining , correct antibodies being added to the correct slides, and amount of reagents (no matter how careful you are, you will put more on than the stainer).
Just my thoughts.
We do 30-35,000 slides per year, we have three Ventana Ultras and they are busy all the time.  and so are my 2 techs.
Sue

Sue Hunter, Supervisor
Advanced Diagnostics
Beaumont Health System
Royal Oak MI
248-898-5146
shunter <@t> beaumont.edu



-----Original Message-----
From: histonet-bounces <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu [mailto:histonet-bounces <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu] On Behalf Of Histology
Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2013 12:47 PM
To: histonet <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu
Subject: [Histonet] manual IHC staining

Hi all-

 

Does anyone out there still do manual, offline IHC staining?  We currently do about 20,000 IHC slides per year and my boss would like to consider dropping the automatic stainers and doing them by hand. If you do manual staining, how long does it take, how much tech time is needed, and what about CAP inspections?  

 

Thanks in advance,

 

 

Mehndi Helgren

Dominion Pathology Laboratories

733 Boush St.

Suite 200

Norfolk, VA  23510

757-664-7901

histo <@t> pathlab.us

 

_______________________________________________
Histonet mailing list
Histonet <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu
http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet