Validating your H&E Staining Systems

In this age of healthcare regulatory standards and compliance, every aspect in diagnostic patient care must be developed, documented, and validated ‘before’ they can be used in testing and diagnoses. Procedures which were once deemed as ‘routine’, as in the routine staining procedure (H&E) which constitutes 95-100% of most hospital initial testing review in histopathology; these procedures including protocol, stains, tissue specimens, and Q.A. monitoring and maintenance, all must go through stringent testing to show they produce reliable, reproducible results. This session will look at every aspect of your routine staining system from the stain dyes used (hematoxylin and eosin), various protocol trials with different staining intensities, the differences in instrumentation and how they perform, specimens being used to validate the stain, and technical review and sign-off by the pathologist.

1. Create a standard H&E multi-tissue control block
2. Set up an internal quality assurance schedule
3. Document and retain the validation procedure for regulatory inspection