[Histonet] Control strength? - personal opinion

[Elizabeth Chlipala]

Rene

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you.   In my opinion this is the one of biggest problems we have now a days when we  interpret our positive controls in histology.  We have been determining if staining is acceptable verses not acceptable for years as "yes it stained no it did not stain" and we really have to change how we look at our controls over time.  Staining intensity and consistency is key in determining overall quality of both special and IHC staining, especially when it comes to therapeutic markers and especially if we are utilizing image analysis for those markers like ER/PR and HER2.  We need to look at what we do over time and get away from what we have been doing in the past, such as acceptable verses not acceptable.  What we need to be able to define is the following especially in IHC staining - accuracy, precision, and robustness of staining just to name a few.   

It may be sometimes too late when a pathologist complains about it, that could mean that signal strength has been decreasing over time and has finally gotten to the point where the staining is inadequate.  I would think we would want to address trending problems sooner, since weaker staining intensity in control tissue could lead to false negatives in samples that do not express the protein we are trying to detect at lower expression levels.

This is what we do here.   We scan all of our positive IHC control slides that we utilize for image analysis and track staining intensity overtime either by visually looking at the positive control slides (many at a time) or running image analysis and then graphing our staining intensity in a Levy Jennings chart.  This is new for us and we are still working out the details on how we can interpret the data but we have found the information to be very valuable and enlightening.

Just my two cents for whatever it is worth.

Liz


Elizabeth A. Chlipala, BS, HTL(ASCP)QIHC
Premier Laboratory, LLC
PO Box 18592
Boulder, CO 80308
(303) 682-3949 office
(303) 682-9060 fax
(303) 881-0763 cell
liz <@t> premierlab.com
www.premierlab.com

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-----Original Message-----
From: histonet-bounces <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu [mailto:histonet-bounces <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu] On Behalf Of Rene J Buesa
Sent: Monday, December 22, 2014 2:51 PM
To: Johnson, Carole; histonet <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu
Subject: Re: [Histonet] Control strength?

As I see it, control "strength" is less important than its ADEQUACY for diagnosis.Every time a pathologists signs a case requiring a special procedure WITH a control, it means that the control was adequate, UNLESS the pathologist complains about it.René J.  

     On Monday, December 22, 2014 4:00 PM, "Johnson, Carole" <cjohnson <@t> nmda.nmsu.edu> wrote:
   

 Hello all,

How are you documenting trending signal strength of your controls for special stains and IHC? I was asked this question during an audit and would appreciate your help.

Carole Johnson
Carole Johnson, HT(ASCP)cm
New Mexico Department of Agriculture
Veterinary Diagnostic Services
505.838.9299

To understand is to stand under, which is to look up, which is a good way to understand




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