I ditto what the Samarai Pathologist said...a few years ago we were involved
in a CAP survey, where the pathologists were supposed to identify and report
floaters, and then grade them as to their degree of  difficulty in
diagnosing the case or determining whether they were, in fact, floaters.
Turns out there were more than they thought, just because they had been
accustomed to mentally discounting them.

As for shed squamous cells, yes, I find them to be quite an annoying
artifact.  Not nearly as annoying as a PAS stain after having one's saliva
dry on a digested slide.  <Yuck!>

-Teri Johnson, HT(ASCP)
Physician's Reference Laboratory
Overland Park, KS

P.S.  Rhonda Rogers...please contact me.  :)


----- Original Message -----
From: <RSRICHMOND@aol.com>
To: <HistoNet@pathology.swmed.edu>
Sent: Monday, May 08, 2000 8:15 AM
Subject: Skin problems?


> One of you inquired if pathologists notice desquamated keratinocytes in
> tissue sections. - My reply would be that I occasionally see them, but
> probably miss most of them. They're more of a nuisance in Pap smears.
>
> One's ability to ignore the unexpected is amazing. Several years ago I was
in
> my first day in a small lab in a galaxy far away. Most of what they
processed
> was small skin bumps, with a few hospital specimens. I chanced to notice
an
> extraneous object outside the outline of a small skin section, and saw
that
> it was a malignant acinus, obviously shed from a papillary adenocarcinoma.
> There were more of them. I looked back through the slides I'd already
> finished with, and found a few more. I had quite ignored them, because
they
> were outside the confines of what I was looking at. I then fast-forwarded
> through the rest of the day's work and found a total of 26 cases with
acini
> in them.
>
> The day's first specimen - grossed by someone else the previous Friday
before
> I got there - was a lens-paper packet containing a cell button from an
> abdominal fluid specimen from a paracentesis. (For some reason I didn't
see
> this case first in the morning's work.) The packet had fallen open and
> spilled some of its contents into the surrounding solution (in an old
> open-bucket Technicon, I believe I remember).
>
> I phoned the submitting physician, who told me that he hadn't suspected
> cancer at all strongly when he submitted the specimen, but that his
patient's
> ascites must have been caused by advanced cancer of the ovary.
>
> Russ, it's spelled either "artifact" or "artefact", with the first being
more
> common - it's one of those unusual English words (like canteloupe) that
has
> no standardized spelling.
>
> Bob Richmond
> Samurai Pathologist (and 1951 grade school spelling champion of the R.C.
> Archdiocese of San Antonio TX which was pretty good for an Episcopalian)
> Knoxville TN
>
>