[Histonet] Air pocket in paraffin blocks

[Victoria Baker]

Hi,

When I was trained to do embedding there were many things that the
professor stressed to me need to be done in order to have the tissue block
acceptable for sectioning.  One of these was air bubbles.

Recently we had a new tech embed a derm block that had an bubble that was
pretty big.  The other (experienced) techs didn't think anything of it
either and sectioned it.  When I got the block for IHC screening I made a
QA form stating that the block should have been re-embedded before giving
it to be sectioned, or when the first tech sectioned it could have repaired
the block or melted it down.  This air bubble was big enough to be seen so
I don't think it could have been missed - unless the block wasn't checked
right after embedding.

What has me a little upset is that no one seemed to care about this.

I would really appreciate some feedback about this from other people.

Thanks in advance.

Vikki