Crash Course In Special Stains: Recognize 15 Stains in 60 Minutes - Can It Be Done?

Course overview

This course is targeted to those of us who are novices to histotechnology, or at least to the special stains lab. In the hospital where I originally trained, a trainee was not allowed to assist in the special stains lab without being certified. Unfortunately, for people like me who learn better with hands-on experience, learning enough about special stains to get certified without hands-on training was a daunting task. Essentially, it was up to me to memorize Frieda Carson's legendary histotechnology book. The shear number of special stains in her book, what they identified, and the reagents required were fairly overwhelming. This session is meant to help the novice histotech to learn stain name, target tissue component, and general reagents used. For this presentation, there will be no in-depth discussion of tissue structures. Instead, this fast-paced, drill-based presentation is meant to introduce novice microscopists to the following special stains in the space of an hour: Acid fast bacillus, GMS, alcian blue, colloidal iron, periodic acid Schiff (with and without diastase, and with light green), trichrome, Verhof van Gieson, gram, Fontana Masson, reticulin, luxol fast blue, mucicarmine, Prussian blue, rhodanine, and von Kossa.