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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