[Histonet] Tissue Fixation

[Tony Henwood (SCHN)]

If the specimen is placed on absorbent paper prior to fixation, the paper will gradually absorb the water from the specimen causing it to dry out.
Microscopically the tissue will look  a little like what you see when a laser scalpel is used to excise a skin specimen. The heat affected eosin stained collagen will look quite brilliant (even fluorescent like) and if you do a Masson stain for connective tissue will give a red colouration, rather than a green or blue you would normally see with well-fixed collagen.

Regards 
Tony Henwood JP, MSc, BAppSc, GradDipSysAnalys, CT(ASC), FFSc(RCPA) 
Principal Scientist, the Children's Hospital at Westmead
Adjunct Fellow, School of Medicine, University of Western Sydney 
Tel: 612 9845 3306 
Fax: 612 9845 3318 
Pathology Department
the children's hospital at westmead
Cnr Hawkesbury Road and Hainsworth Street, Westmead
Locked Bag 4001, Westmead NSW 2145, AUSTRALIA 

-----Original Message-----
From: T H via Histonet [mailto:histonet at lists.utsouthwestern.edu] 
Sent: Friday, 31 March 2017 11:51 PM
To: histonet at lists.utsouthwestern.edu
Subject: [Histonet] Tissue Fixation

Good Morning,


I have a pathologist that is not happy with the fixation on some of our LEEP specimens.  She swears its histology doing something to the specimen to cause the tissue to look unfixed on only "part" of the LEEP specimens (all the same client specimens).  She claims we must be diluting our formalin to cause this issue or "something".  We mentioned maybe it was on the clients end not placing them in 10% formalin right away, she wouldn't hear of it.


Let me give you some back ground on how our process works.  Our clients send us all our specimens to us via Overnight FedEx or UPS in 10% formalin they will then they sit in 10% formalin in-house until the processors are started around 3pm and sits an additional 5 hours in 10% formalin on the processor before the processor actually starts.  That being said the fixation process has had a pretty good start before we ever even touch it.


My question is, and I thought I had read this in the past is, when a specimen is left out prior to fixation and lying on a absorbent surface such as a paper towel, won't the area of the tissue touching the absorbent surface begin the disintegration processes faster in that exact area then the rest of the specimen?  Or if you have any other suggestion on what might be happening to only "certain" specimens would be great as well.


Thanks for your help!


Tim

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