Hi Amy,

Breast fluids (and urines) are notorious for washing off!!  Some things that
might help:

1.  For all your cytology, you should be using 95% alcohol as a fixative.
That will give you optimal fixation for all your cytology morphology,  and
may help reduce "wash off"

2.  If your breast fluids are arriving in any fixative (other than
Saccomanno fluid), there's the problem right there.  If they're "pre-fixed"
the cells won't adhere to the slide well.

3.  Try using a spray cytology fixative instead of immersing the slides in
the alcohol.  This will probably help a lot!

4.  If you have a cytocentrifuge,  use that to prepare the breast fluids
unless they are heavily cellular.  Cytocentrifuge preps have much less "wash
off"

5.  Many times, those turbid looking breast fluids really are mostly protein
in the fluid, rather than cells.  Just because the specimen looked opaque,
doesn't mean the pathologist will see abundant cells.  (Want to check a
couple out before prepping??  Try making a Toludine Blue wet film, you'll be
able to see if it's cells or just protein.)

Let me know if this helps!  If not, we can explore some other things.

Beth Cox, SCT/HT(ASCP)


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