RE: Her-2 and fixation

From:"Houston, Ronnie"

Personally can't comment on performing FISH as we send ours out. However, we
have been sending out our FISH testing for years to 2 major reference labs,
and they have never had a problem with our zinc fixed tissue.
Absolutely no problems with tissue floating, no matter what type of epitope
retrieval, and ALL immunos beautiful, crisp and clean
Ronnie Houston
Regional Histology Operations Manager
Bon Secours HealthPartners Laboratories
5801 Bremo Road
Richmond, VA 23226

-----Original Message-----
From: Patty Kubier [mailto:pkubier@hotmail.com]
Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 7:41 PM
To: Terry.Marshall@rothgen.nhs.uk
Cc: histonet@pathology.swmed.edu
Subject: Re: Her-2 and fixation


Terry,
I work in a reference lab and we receive cases from all over the country.  I

have not been a fan of zinc formalin for IHC or HER-2(FISH) testing.  It's 
been my experience that tissue fixed in Zinc Formalin has a greater tendency

to fall off the slide during antigen retrieval than tissue fixed in 10% 
formalin.
The few cases we have received for HER-2(FISH) testing fixed in zinc 
formalin were uninterpretable as a result of overdigested cells and weak, or

no signal, in the nuclei. Only the zinc formalin cases behaved this way in 
comparison to tissue fixed in 10% formalin and each were performed on the 
same run. We have had (2) cases, so far, that were fixed in zinc-formalin 
since beginning the HER-2(FISH) testing and both cases presented these 
problems.  Has anyone else had this experience with zinc formalin?   
Sometimes, we are not provided information on the type of fixatives, 
post-fixatives, or reagents used by other labs until we notice a problem 
with results that require investigating.
Sincerely,
Patty Kubier





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