RE: soaking blocks

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From:Bert Dotson <amdj@duke.edu>
To:'histonet' <histonet@pathology.swmed.edu>
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Soaking can help to ease cutting over-dehydrated tissues. Cold soaks, warm 
soaks, and room temp soaks can be used to resolve various sectioning 
problems from chatter to compression. The choice of temperature usually 
depends on the tissue type and the problem you are having. I use warm soaks 
for particularly tough tissues such as uterus, heart valve and disc. 
Ammonium hydroxide I have found useful only on bloody tissue and lens that 
tend to shatter when cut. If your tissues are not adequately cleared and 
infiltrated, soaking will do more harm than good. Soaking before the block 
has been faced is pointless. Some chemicals (NH4OH, Decal solutions, 
Aerosol OT, Tween) that have been used for soaking can cause staining or 
section adhesion problems when over-done. I personally don't see the point 
to soaking a block that doesn't pose microtomy problems to begin with. If 
you need to soak every block, maybe you need to adjust your processing 
schedule.

Bert

-----Original Message-----
From:	Ryan.Linda [SMTP:ryan2@niehs.nih.gov]
Sent:	Friday, June 23, 2000 11:26 AM
To:	'histonet'
Subject:	soaking blocks

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