Department of Pathology, Austin Health, Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia.
Translational Obstetrics Group, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia.
Acta Cytol. 2021;65(5):417-423. doi: 10.1159/000516384. Epub 2021 Jun 2.
The cell block (CB) is an important adjunct to cytological preparations in diagnostic cytopathology. Optimizing cellular material in the CB is essential to the success of ancillary studies such as immunohistochemistry (IHC) and molecular studies (MS). Our aim was to identify which CB method was most suitable in a variety of specimen types and levels of cellularity.
We assessed 4 different CB methods, thrombin clot method (TCM), MD Anderson method (MDAM), gelatin foam method (GFM), and agar method (AM), with descriptive observations and ranking of the methods based on quantity of cells and morphological features.
TCM performed best in ranking for both quantity of cells and morphological features, followed by MDAM, GFM, and AM. Lack of adjuvant in the MDAM resulted in some unique morphological advantages which, however, also resulted in inconsistent performance. In low cellularity cases insufficient cells were frequently identified on slides from MDAM and AM CBs. Technique touch time was similar for all methods, with total processing time being shortest for TCM followed by MDAM, GFM, and AM.
TCM was the most robust CB technique, retaining high scores for ranking of quantity and morphology in a variety of specimen cellularities and specimen types.
细胞块（CB）是诊断细胞学中细胞学制剂的重要辅助手段。优化 CB 中的细胞物质对于免疫组织化学（IHC）和分子研究（MS）等辅助研究的成功至关重要。我们的目的是确定在各种标本类型和细胞密度下哪种 CB 方法最适合。
我们评估了 4 种不同的 CB 方法，即凝血酶凝块法（TCM）、MD 安德森法（MDAM）、明胶泡沫法（GFM）和琼脂法（AM），并对这些方法进行了描述性观察和基于细胞数量和形态特征的方法排名。
TCM 在细胞数量和形态特征的排名中表现最好，其次是 MDAM、GFM 和 AM。MDAM 中缺乏辅助剂导致了一些独特的形态优势，但也导致了不一致的性能。在低细胞密度的情况下，MDAM 和 AM CB 上的载玻片上经常无法识别到足够的细胞。所有方法的技术接触时间相似，TCM 的总处理时间最短，其次是 MDAM、GFM 和 AM。
TCM 是最稳健的 CB 技术，在各种标本细胞密度和标本类型中，在数量和形态的排名中保持高分。
