[Histonet] Waterbath cleanliness

Tue May 26 06:08:05 CDT 2015

Hi,

Paraffin build-up should not be a common practice. I recall being told as a student decades ago, "The waterbath should be kept scrupulously clean". Some things are still true today and this is one of them. 

Does your waterbath have a glass insert? If so, simply wipe off all of the paraffin you can and then wipe off remaining debris with a small amount of xylene and wipe that off with alcohol. Then a quick wash in warm soapy water takes care of the rest. In a high-volume lab a quick wash in the lab dishwasher is perfect.

My waterbath has no insert...just a solid black finish and of course it cannot be submerged in water and xylene is out of the question. I just make sure there is no paraffin on the edges and if some happens to get stuck there in spite of my efforts then I use a small amount of alcohol on gauze and remove it. Then I rinse the waterbath in distilled  water, dry it out and then squirt a small amount of alcohol in it, swish it around and wipe it dry.

We also only use distilled water in our waterbath.

Jeanine Sanders
CDC Atlanta

-----Original Message-----
From: Garrey Faller [mailto:garreyf at gmail.com] 
Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2015 12:14 PM
To: histonet at lists.utsouthwestern.edu
Subject: [Histonet] Waterbath cleanliness

Hi everyone,

I am looking for a histotech procedure for keeping the water bath clean and for preventing cross contamination of patient specimens. I know one should use a kim wipe (or something similar) to clean the water surface of any ribbon debris between cases. However, should the top edge of the water bath be clean of all debris between every case?  Sometimes I see a mound-like build up of paraffin ribbon debris, and I am told that this is a normal practice while others say that it is not.
I'd like to modify my policy to say that there should be no debris on the water surface or on the hard top edge of the water bath in between cases.
Is this out of line? Is this what everyone practices?

Also, with the exception of rush type cases and perhaps large specimens, does everyone embed in numerical order and then cut in numerical order?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Garrey  Faller
Pathologist
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