Effects of dehydration time and staining technique on microscopic diagnosis of colitis

Abstract: ABSTRACT In the western world colitis is a common chronic disease and in Sweden the prevalence is around 1%. If a patient has bloody diarrhea it is probably ulcerative proctocolitis or Crohn’s disease, whereas if the diarrhea is watery, it is microscopic colitis. For a diagnosis, the patient has to do a colonoscopy and a colonic biopsy sample has to be taken. The biopsy sample will be sent to a laboratory for sectioning, staining and microscopic analysis. In this study we compared the effects of short and long dehydration time of the sample before the sectioning. We also compared staining with Alcianblue/Van Gieson and Van Gieson alone. Our results showed that a short dehydration time was a milder treatment and made it easier to section the biopsy sample. The comparison of the two methods was unsuccessful because the staining with Alcianblue/Van Gieson failed.