We recently purchased a Energy Beam microwave for processing our
STAT biopsies on our transplant specimens.  All has been working well
except for the Zenker fixed kidney needle biopsies.  The comments from
our pathologists range from under processed, under fixed, pale/washed
out staining to "totally uninterpretable".  We have already increased our
fixation and the processing times with little improvement. The current
protocol is as follows:

Zenkers (with zinc not mercury) minimum 1 hour
100% ethyl alcohol 8 min at 67 degrees
Isopropyl alcohol 8 min at 74 degrees
Paraffin 3 min at 64 degrees, same container reset for 5 min at 82
degrees

All reagents are replaced each run. Sections are cut at 2 microns and
the hematoxylin time at 12 minutes (routine time is at 7). Has anyone in
HistoNet land experienced a similar problem or used Zenker in the
microwave?  We have had to discontinue the microwave processing on
Zenker specimens and go back to processing on our VIP, with all times
set a 5 minute. With this VIP procedure the sections look great, but it
takes almost 2 hours (our customer need the results faster than that).
Please help!