Hi Michelle,
   Have you determined if the processor malfunctioned?  I was wondering
why they are underprocessed.  Are you planning to run them back through
the same program and the same solutions?  Unless you determine where the
underprocessing happened, ie, not enough water taken out, not enough
alcohol cleared, not enough infiltration, you might end up with the same
problem.  You only need to run them back to the step where the
processing problem occurred.  Are you planning to change solutions if
they were old or increase the times?  What do the tissues look like? 
Are they soft and mushy or just difficult to cut.  What do they smell
like?  Can you smell xylene or alcohol?
  There is an article in Histologic that you can get online about
reprocessing.  It looked interesting, but I have not had to try it,
knock on wood.  Usually, I put them back into hot paraffin to melt the
paraffin and put them into xylene while they are still hot.  The xylene
will usually be enough as it will tolerate some water, but you may have
to go back into absolute if they still have a lot of water in them.  I
use all fresh solutions.  You have to be able to look at the wet tissue
and know what it still needs.  White areas indicate water present.  When
they are in xylene, they should be "cleared" of alcohol and that has a
certain look to it.  It is one of the advantages of having processed
tissue by hand.  Maybe that is something they should add to the HT exam.
 Also, you can do a search on the Histonet Archives, because I know this
has been discussed recently.
  Good luck, Sarah
   

Sarah Jones HT(ASCP)
Dept. of Vet. Anatomy & Public Health
Histology Lab
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-4458
phone: 979-845-3177
fax:  979-458-3499


>>> "Michelle D. Moore"  09/17/03 11:30AM >>>
Hello fellow histonetters, hope everyone is having a good day so far! I
am in a bind and I know you can help me, I was embedding this morning
and having a very difficult time with my tissues, so I finally finished
embedding and when I started to cut, nothing and I mean nothing would
section UUGH. Well in the process I thought maybe it was some new
paraffin I was trying so I didn't get to excited until I couldn't cut
anything. Needless to say what I need from you wonderful people is help
on reprocessing my tissue I know I need to remove the paraffin that's in
the tissue and clear the xylene out but I have no procedure for doing
this and it has been years since I have had to do it. Any help you could
direct my way or any procedure that you would be willing to share would
be greatly appreciated!! THANK YOU in advance for saving my rear I do
appreciate it a lot. That's the beauty of the histonet people helping
people.

Michelle D. Moore HT (ASCP)
The Memorial Hospital
Craig, CO

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