Another trick is to look at the block face under a stereo microscope.
I have done this for very small specimens.
Margaret Blount
Unilever research
Beds
UK

-----Original Message-----
From:	Tim Morken [SMTP:timcdc@hotmail.com]
Sent:	Wednesday, June 30, 1999 8:46 PM
To:	histonet@Pathology.swmed.edu
Subject:	Re: A quickmorphology stain for paraffin sections?

Andrea,

If the structure is fairly large you can use a pseudo-interference contrast 
illumination method to see structure in the section. Just move the objective 
of the microscope slightly to one side of its normal position and you can 
see 3D structure without doing any deparaffinizing or staining. You will be 
surprised how much detail you can make out. This is a great method for 
finding gloms on kidney frozens.

Tim Morken, B.A., EMT(MSA), HTL(ASCP)
Infectious Disease Pathology
Centers for Disease Control
MS-G32
1600 Clifton Rd.
Atlanta, GA 30333
USA

email: tim9@cdc.gov
       timcdc@hotmail.com

Phone: (404) 639-3964
FAX:  (404)639-3043

----Original Message Follows----
From: "Barry Rittman" <brittman@mail.db.uth.tmc.edu>
To: histonet <histonet@Pathology.swmed.edu>
Subject: Re: A quickmorphology stain for paraffin sections?
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 12:15:28 -0500

Andrea,
                 we used to use a cotton ball moistened with dilute 
methylene
blue to wipe over the surface of the block. This gave us a good idea of the
tissue at that level and helped greatly in the orientation.
If you prefer  you can always place a cut section on a slide and add several
drops of dilute aqueous methylene blue (say 0.05-0.1%), this also works 
well.
No need to mount the section.
Barry

AndreaH@imclone.com wrote:

 > This is probably a silly question but ... I was wondering is there any 
way
 > to quickly stain paraffin sections so that I can evaluate whether or not 
I
 > need to cut further into the block.  We are looking for something very
 > specific and every section counts but to section the whole block would 
take
 > hours of time not to mention many many expensive slides?  Can you quick
 > stain sections without deparaffinizing?
 >
 > Andrea









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