Quality Speed precision with a True Margin

This is actually just the first 7 seven minutes of a 54-minute video that was made at someone’s request to see how we work in our lab. In the full movie I fully embed, and cut 14 blocks of tissue of various sizes many are large fatty pieces. The footage is unedited or scripted it includes freeze time and challenges with blocks that need extra care and time to section, (its as real as it gets) but in the end for all the clock watches 14 block (all kinds) averaging 3.8 min to embed, freeze and cut to 100% margin. This shorter video is the first three cases of that morning a small, medium and large layer of tissue processed in just over 2 min a block.

The longer video needs some extensive file compression in order to share,(huge file in 1080p), we are working on it and it should be available soon.

Minimizing Tissue Wastage in Mohs Surgery Frozen Section Processing 
Using a Novel Embedding Device

This might seem banal, but we filmed one of the cases for the paper to clearly demonstrate that the sections are harvested immediately with no block trimming AKA facing. Please refer to the poster and note the sizes of some of the layers sectioned and note the surprizing amount of tissue present on the first cut, (on our slides first cut is adjacent to he slide label). Also keep in mind that our sectioning protocol prompts us to ad a thing layer of embedding medium on the glass slide before we lay the relaxed tissue on it for freezing. This layer can be identified early in the video as the tissue is freezing as the area of opaqueness surrounding the tissue, before more medium from the bottle is pored over to complete the embedding process. The take away point is that this first cut/ tissue section includes this thing O.C.T. layer as well.

True Margin – The impossible cut !

This video started off as a challenge that I gave myself. If ever as a surgeon you have given an ultra thin layer or membrane  (think periosteum) to your tech then Imagine a 6 Micron layer. No room for error as the block is essentially exhausted before we start.

True Margin – An elegant solution to a complex problem

Advanced Anti Roll Plate – Part 1

Advanced Anti Roll Plate – Part 2