[Histonet] Restaining old Heamatology smears

[Eddie Martin]

Hi Laurie,

Blood is considered a tissue so it is very much still Histo related. 

Regarding your smears, this also occurs in our hematopathology laboratory from time to time when we are scanning old slides and there’s a bubble under the coverslip that won’t let us take images with our digital scope. 

It may very well be that there is still a resinous permount film on your slides from the old coverslip. This may simply be removed by leaving the smear in xylene some additional time to remove the resin. Then place slides in 100% alcohol to remove xylene residues. The following steps would be rehydrating the slides with dilute changes in in alcohol...ie: 95%,then 85%, then 70%, then in a few changes of distilled water. If you can’t get the pH of your water to pH 7.2, then you could use a phosphate buffered solution to achieve this in place of the distilled water. 

Then place your slides in a working Giemsa working  solution. It may help to rock your slides or slightly agitate them to improve staining intensity. 

I hope this helps. 
Please feel free to contact me via email at Eddie.martin at NIH.gov





> On Oct 17, 2018, at 10:51 PM, Reilly, Laurie <laurie.reilly at jcu.edu.au> wrote:
> 
> Dear Histonetters,
> This is not quite Histo but related. One of our Laboratory Scientists has removed the coverslips from faded blood smears used for teaching and is having trouble restaining them with Wright's stain.
> Could we please call on the combined wisdom of the Histonet to try to find a solution to this problem.
> 
> Regards,      Laurie.
> 
> Mr. Laurie REILLY
> Histopathology
> Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences
> James Cook University
> Townsville  Qld.  4811
> Australia.
> 
> Phone 07 4781 4468
> Mobile 0448 957747
> 
>