[Histonet] RE: manual IHC staining

[Morken, Timothy]

Mehndi,

Why? Is your automation costing a lot? Your average is 76 slides/day. That is a substantial number. If your automation is costing a lot, then look for a less costly alternative, like the BioCare  or Thermo Fisher (Lab Vision) instruments. Those are completely open systems that can have very low costs if you are careful choosing reagents.

We do maybe 50 IF slides per day in our kidney lab and would not get rid of automation. In fact, I would only get rid of automation if we were batching slides only a couple days per week. It saves so much hands on time that only if you have extra staff and very cheap labor costs is it worth dropping. 


My cost calculations show that even at only 50 slides per day we spend only 10% of our total cost of the test on the Dako (Autostainer Plus, same as Lab Vision 480) automation portion (including service contract costs). The major factor is the cost of reagents. And reagent cost won't change much with manual unless you change all your reagents. But your labor costs will skyrocket. 

I recommend keeping automation, but evaluate your platform for excess costs.


Tim Morken
UCSF Pathology

-----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 9:47 AM
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

 

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