Improvement of Histopathological Sample Preparation by Employing Microwave Heating Method on Frozen Section Specimens

Biological samples can be fixed either by chemical method by using chemical solution or physical methods by using heat treatment. The problem in traditional heat fixation is unsatisfactory quality due to uneven heat conduction in specimen and loss of inner cell contents. Chemical fixation method also bears several intrinsic problems like the limit in specimen size, time consumption in fixative impregnation, and loss of low molecular weight cell components. These factors deteriorate the quality of fixed specimen, thus limit the magnification and contrast of tissue pictures. Microwave heat has been reported to be a good alternative to current chemical methods to overcome these problem. In this study, we tried to introduce the microwave energy method to routine fixation work in hospital. We replaced chemical fixative with saline to provide moderate reaction condition, and used frozen section to reduce time for sample preparation. Temperature was measured at each experiment. The fixation of rat kidney tissue with 2.45 GHz electromagnetic wave and saline showed similar result to the control group fixed with traditional chemical method. Human tumor tissue fixed with 2.45 GHz electromagnetic in frozen section was improved in terms of histochemistry of PAS and immunohistochemistry of tumor marker like cytokeratin. Total turnaround time was reduced from $24\sim38$ h to to $2\sim4$ h. In conclusion, the quality of samples prepared by microwave heating method was at least as good as that of traditional method. If the condition for the fixation of different specimens is standardized, this new method could be applied to routine work in hospital, and could save working time as well.