HISTOooing [ Reticulin stain & Frozen section]

Aloha everyone,

i was attached to HISTOPATHOLOGY on week 3 for three days. During thse 3 days, i managed to perform several technique such as tissue embedding, frozen section and special staining and observed many eye-opener stuffs. I got to personally see organs such as uterus, breast, kidney, as well as post-mortem of a stillbirth fetus(22weeks) being dissected and examined by pathologist. It was quite downhearted to see a dead feteus as from what the pathologist said, the baby has brain rupture which may have cause the stillbirth.

Anyway,I did a retic control for RETICULIN STAIN;
Reticulin is a type of fiber that provides structural support in tissues such as liver and kidney. The fibers in our normal liver are in well-defined strands however, an abnormal tissue such as a necrotic liver will have a discontinuous pattern. The positive control that was used is a normal liver, the reticular fibers should look black, when i see it under the microscope, it looks likes small little black dot, and the nuclei will be pinkish red.

Picture of reticular fiber:
http://neuromedia.neurobio.ucla.edu/campbell/connective_tissue/wp_images/34_reticular_fibers.gif

[Picture of retic control]


Next, i also managed to try out how frozen sectioning is like. Firstly frozen section is different from the paraffin sections, frozen sections comes without fixatives,or formalin. Wherever, there is frozen sections, i will follow the medical technologist to the operating theatre (OT) to obtain the fresh tissue excised during surgery.

FROZEN SECTIONING is a rapid diagnostic process whereby the pathologist will make a fast and rapid diagnosis to the surgeon whether the tissue is bengign or malignant,or to evaluate whether the tumour has been completely removed, is like the pathologist acts as a consultant to the surgeon to determine the extent of further surgery at the time of surgical procedure.

For example, if a tumour appears to have metastasized(spread),the suspected metastasis will then be sent for frozen section so that the pathologist will inform the surgeon whether or not to continue the surgery as there is no point in continuing the surgery if the tumour had metastasized.

So after the fresh tissue are obtained from OT, a small amount of OCT (optimum cooling temperature)compound is added onto the tissue and freezed immediately by liquid nitrogen. Thereafter which it is sectioned via a cryo-stat. The interesting part is the tissue section produced will be picked upon by a glass slide, is like you gently use the glas slide to touch the tissue section, the tissue will be condensed onto the slide and produce a smear. As compared to paraffin section it is different, whereby you need to fish it as we did during our histology practical. Next, the section are stained with Haemotoxylin and eosin (H&E), after which the pathologist will be called upon to examine and report the results. The whole procedure is a fast one, around 10 minutes or so, as it is an intraoperative procedure whereby the surgery is still ongoing so diagnosis has to be fast.


[Picture of OCT compound]

[cryocut]

[Picture of interior cryocut]

[Place Where staining is carried out]

[ Place where pathologist cut & examine the tissues]





Note:The above pictures taken 've been granted permission by my lab staff.=]



Signing off,
Yong Herng
0702243G