Experiences with the hematoxylin basic fuchsin picric acid staining method for morphologic diagnosis of myocardial ischemia - an experimental study in forensic pathology.

An investigation was performed on 148 medicolegal autopsy cases with the purpose of obtaining experience with the hematoxylin basic fuchsin acid staining method for morphologic diagnosis of early myocardial ischemia. A comparative study was performed on rats with induced myocardial infarcts. The uptake of the basic fuchsin stain in myocardial sections agreed well with eosinophilia, often occurred when myocardial infarction was suspected, but very often yielded false positive and negative results. This lack of reliability probably depended on the high sensitivity of the staining procedure, degree of autolysis, fixation time, thickness of the sections and mainpulative lesions. Although the HBFP-technique does not seem sufficiently reliable in medicolegal autopsy cases it probably produces accurate results under controlled experimental conditions.