One of the factors that influence this is how the tissue was originally 
grossed. Pieces of tissue that are thinner on one edge than the other have a 
greater tendency to chop out than if the piece is an even "block"  (often 
difficult with fresh unfixed tissue). By orientating the tissue when 
embedding so that the smallest area comes in contact with the knife first 
also helps. This means that instead of the longest axis of the tissue being 
parallel to the edge of the block, the tissue is embedded, so that it is 
"diamond" shaped. Hope that this helps, it is difficult to get a spacial 
concept over without pictures.

Louise Renton
Bone Research Unit
MRC
Johannesburg
South Africa
Tel & fax +27 11 717 2298
"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana"





>From: Peterson Lab 
>To: histonet@pathology.swmed.edu
>Subject: Hard Tissue
>Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 07:27:01 -0600
>
>I think this topic has been discussed before, but I didn't find anything on 
>uterine tissue.  The uterine tissue hardness wasn't a problem until the 
>Pathologist Assistant started placing several pieces of tissue in the same 
>block.  Although this isn't a problem for the pathologists, cutting the 
>tissue is difficult and many times the tissue chunks out of the block.  I 
>was wondering if there was any technique to cutting hard tissue or if there 
>was a pre-processing step that could be taken with this tissue.
>Thanks for your input!!
>Travis Troyer
>


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