Vazzano Jennifer, Sinclair William, Zehr Bradley, Allenby Patricia
The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Department of Pathology, Columbus, OH, USA.
Autops Case Rep. 2021 May 27;11:e2021291. doi: 10.4322/acr.2021.291. eCollection 2021.
Microscopic findings in key tissues are often critical to determine the cause of death in medical autopsies. The overall quality of histologic sections depends on numerous pre-analytic factors, among which are tissue section size and thickness. We designed a prospective quality improvement study to determine whether a simple intervention of formalin pre-fixation of myocardium, liver, and kidney tissues could improve the ease of cutting and quality of autopsy histologic sections as assessed by histotechnicians and pathologists. Of 46 autopsies included in the study, 21 were randomly assigned to formalin pre-fixation, and 25 underwent routine sectioning without formalin pre-fixation. A significant improvement in overall quality score by histotechnicians was detected in the sections from pre-fixed autopsy tissues compared to the control group (p=0.0327). There was no significant difference in quality score between the two groups as assessed by pathologists. Our autopsy quality improvement study demonstrates that a simple, low-cost intervention of formalin pre-fixation of fresh autopsy tissues for 90 minutes could significantly improve the overall quality of sections submitted for histologic processing.
在医学尸检中，关键组织的微观检查结果对于确定死因往往至关重要。组织切片的整体质量取决于众多分析前因素，其中包括组织切片的大小和厚度。我们设计了一项前瞻性质量改进研究，以确定对心肌、肝脏和肾脏组织进行福尔马林预固定这一简单干预措施，是否能如组织技术人员和病理学家所评估的那样，提高尸检组织切片的切割便利性和质量。在纳入该研究的46例尸检中，21例被随机分配接受福尔马林预固定，25例进行未经过福尔马林预固定的常规切片。与对照组相比，在经预固定的尸检组织切片中，组织技术人员检测到整体质量评分有显著提高（p = 0.0327）。病理学家评估的两组质量评分无显著差异。我们的尸检质量改进研究表明，对新鲜尸检组织进行90分钟的福尔马林预固定这一简单、低成本的干预措施，可显著提高提交进行组织学处理的切片的整体质量。
