Bob Richman has a couple of interesting messages in the histonet----about not doing similar cases in a row, to avoid mix ups with the resulting expensive litigation.  Now I’m the one who’s sending the muscle and nerve packets all over the place.  I did nothing but same cases in the 6,359 muscles and 2000plus nerves.  There was rarely any “other” to process in between my specialty.  I didn’t even think of this when I gave each biopsy my own number.  My muscles were numbered from 1 to 6,359.  I sent the reports and case paper work to the main lab. They assigned a number to the case. But all my slides clear through prelim H & E’s to histochemistry had my number on it.  When a case was ready to go to the neuropthologist, I put labels on the slides with the department accession number on them..

At any rate my method of numbering the cases worked very well.  I think the trouble you discuss is more likely to occur when you use the official surgical numbers, which are assigned by someone else and get to be large soon in the year. The one who cuts in marks a strictly nominal number on the paraffin mold.  But my numbers were real sequence numbers with no letters in it that I gave to the case and wrote it on its mold and in my register. But every slide of mine was numbered in  sequence with that number in indelible ink from the start to keep things straight until the accession number came out. When that happened, I labeled the slides and put the official accession number on the labels. Of course, this procedure would not work in the main lab. But when more than one specimen of the same tissue comes in, in a row, isn’t there an added code digit used, added to the accession number, to indicate like specimens, and to keep each of the same tissue cases in sequence??---This must alert the histotechs to the problem and keep these cases straight.  When the histotech starts to cut, it would be the first thing to do to sort the blocks, and spot the same-tissue cases and identify them on their slides, and to alert them to the need for extra care in sectioning, marking the slides, and avoiding mix ups.

.georgecole@ev1.net      .