Pearl,

Most control slides for IHC can be held for months or even years. Some need 
to be cut fresh, or relativly fresh, as you have found. As long as you know 
which need to be cut fresh there is no reason not to cut ahead of time.

As far as paying 7.50 a slide just for the detection, I can't imagine why 
you pay so much. We pay 1.85 per slide for our commercial detection system.


----Original Message Follows----
From: Gervaip@aol.com
To: histonet@pathology.swmed.edu
Subject: IHC controls- storage?
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1999 21:00:59 EDT

Presently, IHC controls, are sectioned on a daily basis for IHC requests.  
Is
there any reason why they cannot be sectioned in batches and stored in slide
boxes for future use?  Our lab did that at one time and it made life so much
easier and I did not think that it affected the quality of the stain.  One
exception:  the ER, PR and Factor 13 controls, were sectioned in small
quantities and stored in a slide box in the refrigerator.  It would be
interesting to find out what other folks are doing.

One main reason we presently do it this way is to keep the cost down...  we
can put several negative controls on one slide, when we have a request for
several antibodies on the same tissue sample.  And with the Ventana, the
detection kit already costs $7.50 per slide or $15 for a set of one positve
and one negative.

Pearl Gervais



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