Noreen,
I had a pathologist who drove me nuts with the same idea. Instead of 
staining in a coplin jar I laid the slides down on a staining rack and 
stained them flat so that the stains or wash fluids were used only for one 
slide. Also use fresh stains. This way those nasty bacteria can not jump 
from slide to slide, or they can't be swimming around in the coplin jars 
getting ready to jump on any unsuspecting patient tissue.
Andi



At 01:49 PM 1/3/02 -0500, you wrote:
>Hello everyone in histoland.  I've got an unusual problem and I hope you 
>guys can help me.
>My pathologist claims that when we do an AFB, some of the bacillus from 
>the positive control "jumps" onto the patient slide and contaminates it. 
>He claims he sees stray bacillus on the slides surrounding the control 
>tissue, and he thinks he see them on the patient slide as well. I have 
>tried several ways of doing this stain and at first thought the tubing on 
>our sink was contaminated. We changed the tubing and used only distilled 
>water, and he still insists they are there.  I have never had a problem 
>like this before. I'm at my wits end. Any suggestion are very welcome.
>Noreen
>
>Noreen S. Gilman, HT (ASCP) CLS
>Broward General Medical Center
>Ft. Lauderdale, FL 3316
>954-355-5592 Phone
>954-355-4139 Fax
>ngilman@nbhd.org

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: Andrea Grantham, HT(ASCP)     Dept. of Cell Biology & Anatomy     :
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