Microwave Tissue Processing – a Paradigm Shift to Rapid Diagnosis

Unique challenges arise for pathologists with the need to conduct rapid investigations for fulfilling the needs of clinicians treating acutely and critically ill patients. Traditional techniques of processing of paraffin embedded tissues require approximately 4 to 5 hours, thereby delaying diagnosis and treatment. Microwave processing is an upcoming method to revamp these niches in rapid processing techniques. In this technique, microwave exposure is used to dehydrate, clear and impregnate tissue sample. Dehydration is accomplished using ethyl alcohol/absolute alcohol and isopropanalol is substituted for xylene as a clearing agent. Microwave processing considerably shortens the preparation time for permanent histologic sections without a demonstrable compromise in section quality.

Some of the advantages of microwave processing over other processing techniques are: it eliminates the need for xylene; has lesser tissue shrinkage; substantially shortens the turnaround time without compromising the overall quality of histologic section; the reagents used in microwave method are found to be much cheaper than those used in conventional method; the overall staining of tissues where wax impregnation done in microwave processing is found to be better than conventional processing and sections show better histologic quality with this method. Finally, microwave processing was found to show better staining of cells with good cytoplasmic, cellular and nuclear details.