Denture Adhesive Used as Gap Filler when Using a Cooling System Installed Microtome: Effects on Preparation of Thin Serial Sections

Abstract

Objectives: We evaluated the usefulness of a cooling system and the use of denture adhesive (DA) as a gap filler in preparing thin serial sections with a sliding microtome.
Methods: We prepared paraffin blocks alone (i.e., no patient sample) and initially examined how DA affected paraffin block cooling by the cooling apparatus. Then, we examined how thin serial sections could be prepared using the cooling system installed in the sliding microtome.
Results: With DA, differences in the block surface temperature between 0-5 min and between 0-20 min after cooling were significantly larger than that without DA, although the block temperature (20 min) was not significantly different with or without DA. Additionally, the cooling system installed in the microtome enabled the generation of 1μm-thick serial sections.
Conclusions: In daily pathology practice, we typically pre-cool blocks using an ice plate or a cooling equipment, but we do not cool the block during sectioning. This condition sometimes leads to difficulty in preparing serial sections. To solve this problem, a cooling system was installed in the microtome.