Dear Histonetters,

I have been following the conversations concerning the saccomano's fluid
and have a question to ask (at the risk of showing my ignorance).  I tried
the fluid quite a few years back and the pathologists were unhappy with it
because when we used it we could not recover a cell block from the
specimen.  We are primarily histology but like many other histology labs,
we do the preps on the non-gyn specimens.  We do quite a lot of special
stains on sputum cell blocks (fungus, AFB and gram) and we have been able
to pick up organisms in the cell blocks when they did not show up on the
smears.  I would welcome any advice on doing the preps using this fixative
as the fluid we spin our specimens down in is not optimum.  Did I use the
fluid incorrectly or does it truly get rid of material that makes the cell
blocks (fibrin?)  Do you use it on other non-gyn specimens also (oops, two
questions-now I really showed my ignorance).

Kaye Ryan
Shands at AGH
Gainesville, Fla.