Bones give our body support, protect internal organs, and are a storehouse of calcium and phosphorus ions. In the histopathology laboratory, bone samples are decalcified allowing them to soften. Softening is needed so the tissue samples can be cut on the microtome. The two most common methods of decalcification are decalcification with acids and decalcification with chelators. Acids can be strong or weak and the chelator EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid) is being used. After decalcification is complete, the samples go through the usual process as any other histological samples. The diagnosis is made by pathologists after they review all the slides and get the results of the molecular tests.
In the master's thesis, we first used statistical analysis to determine what influence different factors have on the time of decalcification. Secondly, we wanted to find out if the time of decalcification can be short-ed - using a microwave oven and heating to 50°C with EDTA reagent compared to heating to 37°C in a drying oven with the same reagent or with TBD (commercially prepared solution of formic acid from Thermo Fischer Scientific) on room temperature.
We reviewed 587 results of the samples which were brought to the Institute of Pathology Faculty of Medicine, Ljubljana, and did the statistical analysis in the SPSS program. The type of decalcification and how we determine the end point of it have a statistically significant influence on the time of decalcification. When we compared individual types of samples we also found that differences can be also seen. The time of decalcification was the shortest when samples were treated with EDTA in the microwave oven, but here we need to emphasize that samples that undergo decalcification with EDTA are usually softer than those treated with TBD. Time is usually measured in hours as samples rarely need only a few hours to decalcinate.
In the second part, we treated the same sample with EDTA in the microwave at 50°C and in the drying oven at 37°C or with TBD at room temperature. The time of decalcification was shortened when the sample was treated in the microwave oven. This method was also introduced into the routine work of the histopathology laboratory of the Institute of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine in Ljubljana.
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