Hi again Aiden!

When we switched from a pressure cooker to a steamer we found we had no
floating at all. With the pressure cooker we sometimes had floating with the
fat in a breast sections - everything else was fine. The pressure cooker
was, however,  better than the microwave as far as floating problems in our
experience. 

You don't mention how long and at what temperature you incubate your slides
prior to deparaffinization. I think this would be a significant variable.
For our breast panels we incubate for 2 hours at 70 C. All other immunos for
Hier are incubated for 5 minutes in a 80 C oven, cooled, and then incubated
for another 5 minutes. They get another 10 minutes on the auto stainer at 60
C. If it is something we suspect might float, we may incubate in the 60 C
oven for 1/2 to 1 hour prior to the 80 C oven incubations. We use
superfrost/plus slides and as I said we have no floating whatsoever.  

Thanks for opening up this topic for discussion and best of luck with your
problem.

Marg
Supervisor, Anatomic Pathology
Eisenhower Medical Center
39-000 Bob Hope Drive
Rancho Mirage, CA 92270


-----Original Message-----
From: Aidan Schurr [mailto:Aidan.Schurr@hvh.co.nz]
Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2001 2:52 PM
To: histonet@pathology.swmed.edu
Subject: sticky slides that aren't sticky...


Hi all,

Recently we have been having terrible terrible problems with tissues falling
off the slides during HIER.  We (like most people) have had intermittant
problems in the past with specific cases, but this is now a generalised
problem.  We coat our own silanised slides, and have tried making up new
batches of these.  We have also tried purchasing commercial polysine slides
which were as bad or worse.  We curretly use MW HIER - is a pressure cooker
any better for keeping tissues on slides?  Any other suggestions?  I'm
rapidly running out of hair....

Many thanks,
Aidan, New Zealand.


_____________________________________
a i d a n   c   s c h u r r
 section head, histology
  department of pathology
hutt valley health
high street, lower hutt
wellington
new zealand
telephone ++64 4 5709173
facsimile ++64 4 5709214