Laboratory mill for pulverizing and homogenizing nail specimens as an aid to microscopy and culture confirmation of onychomycosis.

A small mill has been developed for reducing nail clippings to a convenient size for microscopy and inoculation onto isolation media. The milling process acts to pulverize and homogenize the specimen. The use of a homogeneous sample in microscopy increases the opportunity for the discovery of fungal hyphae in a specimen. The use of a pulverized specimen increases the possibility of culture isolation by permitting greater numbers of potentially viable fungal cells to come into direct contact with the isolation medium.