Hi,

We often receive unstained peripheral blood and marrow smears from other cities in the country. These smears do not stain optimally at our facility, even after manipulating stain timings. Therefore reporting these is problematic. We suspect that folks out there fix the unstained slides in alcohol before sending them to us. Is there any solution for improving the staining??

Hi

What stainer do you use?  What slides are being used?  We have fought with this also.  It could be a number of things....

We experienced the same thing with our bone marrow smears, then we realized that it was because the marrow smears were being sent in the same container as the biopsies--xylene fumes fix blood smears, but cause them to resist staining.  This may not be your issue, but who knows?

Also, age and storage of the smears may influence staining: we found that if smears were fixed they stained better if they were then stored in the dark after fixing.

 

On 10/15/2018 at 4:48 PM, Amy Sweeney said:

Hi

What stainer do you use?  What slides are being used?  We have fought with this also.  It could be a number of things....

For marrow smears and the peripheral smears accompanying them, we use manual Leishmann staining. The slides we receive from outside are plain glass slides, un- frosted, company not known.

On 10/17/2018 at 5:36 PM, kimannez said:

We experienced the same thing with our bone marrow smears, then we realized that it was because the marrow smears were being sent in the same container as the biopsies--xylene fumes fix blood smears, but cause them to resist staining.  This may not be your issue, but who knows?

Also, age and storage of the smears may influence staining: we found that if smears were fixed they stained better if they were then stored in the dark after fixing.

 

They come wrapped in tissue paper, while the core biopsy comes in container with formalin. 

I apologize--I meant formalin.  Even with the biopsy cups being closed, if the slides were in the same bag, it would "fix" the smears.