[Histonet] Frozen section problem

[Bob Richmond]

Dorianne Bonello, Allied Health Practitioner (MLS), Histology Laboratory -
Pathology Health-Mater Dei Hospital, on the island of Malta asks:


> >>We are experiencing freezing artifacts on our frozen sections.
> Basically, we are seeing cavity-like structures under the microscope,
> mostly elongated, especially when it's a frozen section on brain tissue.
> This is most probably happening due to ice crystal formation. We're not
> using cryospray, relying only on the cryobar boost function.<<
>
> You need to freeze faster. A low-tech solution is a "heat extractor" - a
> flat-bottomed mass of metal with a handle, kept cold in the cryostat, that
> you press on top of the specimen after it's mounted on the chuck with
> frozen section embedding medium. Here's a picture of it:

https://tinyurl.com/4djk85xd

This 82 year old pathologist would expect to trouble-shoot the problem
himself.

Not every day I get e-mail from Malta! If anyone on Histonet doesn't know
where Malta is, it's an island nation in the Mediterranean Sea, south of
Sicily. If you look at the Mater Dei web site, you'll see that it's in
English, but with occasional lines of Maltese, the native language of the
island, a form of North African Arabic, but always written in the Roman
alphabet. Wikipedia has good resources for the island, the language, and
the Mater Dei Hospital.

Bob Richmond
Samurai Pathologist
Maryville, Tennessee, USA