Over the years, I have encountered numerous techniques to soften and section nail specimens. This includes everything from soaking the exposed specimen in your water bath, different types of softening agents like solutions of potassium hydroxide and even a product like Nair. One rarely...
In part 1 of this blog, I broke down some of the science behind the H&E and discussed a few of the different types of the stain, but there is big debate in the Histology world about Progressive vs Regressive staining, and which is the best choice. So, let’s take a deeper look at the...
The beautiful color that the H&E stain produces is not random. We all know in histology, when staining, ionic bonds are the most important type of bonds. Ions of the opposite charge are attracted to each other through electrostatic interaction. One charge is from the tissue and the other...
Aligning all the microtomes in your histology lab will increase your lab’s efficiency. You will immediately see the benefits of microtomy alignment in cutting recuts and speed- when cutting blocks someone has faced on another microtome. When cutting recuts, microtomy alignment minimizes tissue...
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As our membership knows, histology and histopathology of biopsy samples are an integral part of disease diagnosis. A large part of a histotech’s daily duties includes staining tissue samples to aid physicians in identifying any abnormalities in a tissue sample. The advantages of histological...
If you have worked in a laboratory that processes dermatology specimens, you might be familiar with punch biopsies that are ruling out the diagnosis of Alopecia. Alopecia is an autoimmune disease where your immune system attacks hair follicles, ultimately leading to hair loss. The most common...
Microtomes are at the heart of histotechnology. We've blogged about them before, but not about how histology professionals track their productivity when using them. Today's blog paraphrases the responses to a Histology Professionals Facebook post about a method for tracking microtomy...
The Modern Microwave versus the Traditional Tissue Processing Machine: Realize the Difference Tissue processing is an essential and first step in anatomic pathology laboratory techniques. It is designed to remove all extractable water from the tissue, replacing it with a support medium that...
In a recent Histology Professionals Facebook post, a member posed this question to their group of peers, “W hat do you clean your microtomes with, y’all? Xylene? Oils? Don’t clean them?” While we are lucky to have a very active community on our Facebook page , this particular posting...