Hi Loralee,

My specimens are usually rabbit joints.  I've no experience using a
microwave for processing and need some advice.

Can we use a normal microwave for this purpose?  And what would be the
optimum setting/temperature/time to use and processing time for each
stage 
(fixation and decalcification)?  Would really appreciate any advice from
those who've been there and done that.

Thanks in advance
Julee Chan
Orthopaedic Surgery
National University of Singapore


-----Original Message-----
From: Gehan, Loralee [mailto:Loralee_Gehan@URMC.Rochester.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 9:09 PM
To: Mary Reeves; Chan Wai Kam
Cc: HistoNet Server
Subject: RE: [Histonet] RE: Microwave Tissue Processors


I work in an orthopaedics research lab as well and process many many
many mouse hind limbs, calvaria, etc.  We use a microwave processor from
Hacker (milestone medical).  It has decreased our time to process.  We
had some trouble at the start with some of our enzyme histochemistry.  
The trick to the machine is the heat.  It was heating the samples up so
much that one of our stains wasn't working.  After much testing we
figured out that all you have to do is decrease the temperature of the
processing and increase the time.  It was basically trial and error
because the company markets these for rapid processing for surgical
biopsies.  
We decal on the machine and we also do antigen retrieval and found that
most
of our antibodies worked well with it.   We are still testing out the
capabilities of the machine.  But it has helped this lab become more
efficient. 
	Hope that helps. 

	Loralee Gehan
	Orthopaedics Research Lab
	University of Rochester
> ----------
> From: 	Chan Wai Kam
> Sent: 	Wednesday, October 29, 2003 10:02 PM
> To: 	Mary Reeves
> Cc: 	HistoNet Server
> Subject: 	RE: [Histonet] RE: Microwave Tissue Processors
> 
> Hi Mary,
> 
> I was about to post a question to Histonet about the use of microwave 
> for processing of tissues when I came across your message below. I 
> hope to get some advice.
> 
> I'm from Orthopaedics (research) and I process bone and cartilage 
> specimens the usual way through fixation in formalin, then 
> decalcification and so on.  I'm just wondering whether I can use the 
> microwave to speed up the processing without affecting the quality of 
> the specimens. Our usual processing for bone takes around 3 weeks 
> until embedding so it would be great if we could have something that 
> can speed up the process without sacrifing quality.
> 
> Would appreciate any advice out there.
> 
> Thanks
> Julee Chan
> Orthopaedic Surgery
> National University of Singapore
> 
>    
> 
> 

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