re:hard tissue

From:Gerard Spoelstra

We treat all our our hard tissue including bone(after decalcification) with 
a domestic fabric softener prior to processing. We leave the tissue for a 
hour in 1-5% fabric softener. This works very well. The problem with hard 
tissue is that you need much longer processing times to get adequate 
paraffin infiltration. The softener acts as a surfactant improving the 
dehydration of the tissue. In the time before we started to use softener, 
bone used to swell on the watery ice, clearing demonstrating that there was 
inadequate processing. Its possible that if you used the surfactant for all 
tissue other than hard tissue you may be able to bring down the processing 
times drastically, but I haven't tried this.
Gerard Spoelstra
Medical Scientist
Veterinary Histology
Murdoch University
Western Australia
  




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