Have some questions from our pathologists -

How long have the tape coverslippers been in use in
histology labs? How "old" is the oldest tape coverslipper?

Any one out there been using one for that long?

For those who have been using a tape coverslipper
for that long, have you gone back and looked at
the quality of the coverslip on these old slides? 
Are they falling off? Curling up around the edges? 
Turning yellow? Turning opaque? Getting bleaching
or leeching of tissue stains? etc. I'm looking 
for consistent trends, not the every-now-and-then 
problem.

We have had our tape coverslipper for about 5
years, and have not had any of the above problems,
other than one occasional slide out of thousands.

But our pathologists would like to hear from 
labs with more years of use, to see if they have
had any of these problems.

Please note: I'm NOT saying these coverslippers
are bad. We love ours (we have 2). Just looking
to see if any changes can be expected down the
road. 

We did this when we were coverslipping by hand.
We used to use a synthetic mounting media that 
flowed great while coverslipping (good point), 
took a long time to set (bad point), stains looked
great when first viewed (good point), but if you
pulled the same slides some years later, the 
H&E stains were bleached out (very bad point).
So we switched to the more modern synthetic 
mounting media with anti-oxidant and plasticisor,
and we didn't see that problem again. And, of
course, had to remove the coverslip and restain
any old slides that the pathologists needed to
do a review on. (No, we didn't restain all
"trillion" slides.)

So we just want to see what problems, if any, might 
be arising in the future with the tape coverslipper.

Thanks in advance for any information.

Peggy A. Wenk, HTL(ASCP)
William Beaumont Hospital
Royal Oak, MI 48073