Introduction: Losing of small tissues during tissue preparatory steps may seriously affect pathological diagnostic performance. Using an appropriate tissue marking dye could be an alternative solution. Therefore, the aim of the study was to find a suitable tissue marking dye to enhance the observable ability of various types of small-size tissues during several steps of tissue preparation.
Material and methods: Various small-size samples of various organs and tissues (0.2 to 0.3 cm), including breast, endometrial, and cervical tissue, stomach, small and large intestine, lung, and kidney, were marked with different dyes such as merbromin, hematoxylin, eosin, crystal violet, and alcian blue prior to tissue processing step and their colored-observable ability was evaluated by pathology assistants. Moreover, the diagnostic interfering effect of each tissue marking dye was determined by pathologists.
Results: Merbromin, hematoxylin, and alcian blue increased the colored-observable ability of small tissue samples. We suggest using hematoxylin as a tissue marking dye over merbromin and alcian blue because of less toxicity and no interference effect in the step of routine pathological slide examination.
Conclusions: Hematoxylin could be a suitable tissue marking dye for small-size samples and may improve the preanalytical process of tissue preparation in pathological laboratories.
Keywords: alcian blue; crystal violet; eosin; hematoxylin; merbromin; tissue biopsy; tissue marking.