Special Staining Archives (2024)

FAQs

What are the special stains for biopsy? ›

Aside from standard H&E, the most common special stains used to assess liver biopsies include trichrome, iron, PAS-D, reticulin, and copper. Trichrome is used to assess/stage fibrosis and it stains collagen blue.

H&E also poorly stains elastic material, reticular fibers, basem*nt membranes, and lipids. It only provides limited insight into the specific biochemical nature of the tissue, specifically only the acidic and basic components.

The changes in connective tissue vary from fibrosis to hyalinization (12). Picrosirius red stain has consistently provided excellent results for the demonstration of collagen fibers. This is due to the parallel relationship between the collagen fibers and the dye molecules which results in an enhanced birefringence.

These thin slices of the specimen are placed on glass slides and are dipped into a series of stains or dyes to change the color of the tissue. The color makes different parts of the cells easier to see under a microscope. For most biopsy specimens, this routine processing is all that's needed.

Trichrome - Masson

The dyes are also used to differentiate between smooth muscle and collagen in tumors and verify increase of collagen.

The term special stains traditionally referred to any staining other than an H&E. It covers a wide variety of methods that may be used to visualize particular tissue structures, elements, or even microorganisms not identified by H&E staining.

Factors that influences the staining process are concentration of the dye, temperature, pH of the staining solution and tissue fixation.

Pathologic artifacts are any structures or features that are not normally present in the living animal. Some are minor, easy to distinguish from normal or diseased tissue, and/or do not interfere with the pathologists' ability to provide an accurate diagnosis.

Staining is used to highlight important features of the tissue as well as to enhance the tissue contrast. Hematoxylin is a basic dye that is commonly used in this process and stains the nuclei giving it a bluish color while eosin (another stain dye used in histology) stains the cell's nucleus giving it a pinkish stain.

What is the principle of special staining? ›

Special staining is performed to visualize selected tissue elements, entities and microorganisms. Based on classical dye staining methods, special stains technique provide valuable information in the evaluation of numerous abnormal or disease conditions.

For example, one of the most common stains, Hematoxylin, is a basic dye that stains proteins a blue color, while Eosin stains proteins a pink color. These two stains are commonly used together to define intracellular organelles and proteins.

Von Kossa: Stain best for demonstration of mineralization in bone and other tissues. Also used to demonstrate areas of mineralization in cell cultures. Safranin O: Stain which demonstrates presence of proteoglycans. Goldners Trichrome: Stain utilized for differentiation of mineralized and non-mineralized areas in bone.

Two particular types of staining are used to study nervous tissue in the central system: "bichromes" and silver impregnations. "Bichromes", like Dominici, combine a basic dye (toluidine blue) showing basophilic structures (Nissl's body, the nucleus) and an acidic cytoplasmic dye.

Also called hematoxylin and eosin staining.

Special stains are used as per requirements: Modified Ziehl Neelson (for acid fast bacilli), Gram staining (Bacteria), Mucicarmine (mucins), PAS (for glycogen, fungal wall, lipofuscin, etc), Oil red O (lipids), Perl's Prussian blue (iron), modified Fouchet's test (bilirubin), etc.

Several special stains—hematoxylin and eosin (H&E), periodic acid–Schiff (PAS), Masson's trichrome, Jones methenamine silver (JMS), and Congo red—are routinely used for histopathologic evaluation of renal biopsy specimens.

Although the majority of skin biopsies are successfully processed using routine formalin fixation and stained with haematoxylin and eosin (H&E), occasionally special stains and processing techniques are required for dermatopathological diagnosis and clinical management.