[Histonet] Re: mercurochrome for biopsy marking

From:"Robert Richmond"



Indeed, we've discussed the use of Mercurochrome (merbromin) for
marking small biopsy specimens several times.

Merbromin contains an enormous amount of mercury, and using it will
contaminate your system with mercury - same issue as B-5 fixative.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned Mercurochrome as a
patent medicine several years ago, and merbromin is no longer
available in this form in the USA (or, I think, anywhere).

You can mark specimens with eosin. One of my locum tenens clients - as
I recently posted - uses the safranin solution used in the
conventional Gram stain (as done on smears, not tissue sections) for
marking small specimens, and I have been very much pleased with the
results - much better recovery of very small specimens by the
embedder. As all of our eyes age, this is really worth doing.

Bob Richmond
Samurai Pathologist
Knoxville TN

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