MODIFIED MASSON'S METHOD OF STAINING TISSUES- AN EXPERIMENTAL MICROANATOMY STUDY

Abstract

Staining of the the tissues is an art which gives fruitful results over a period of time. Many researchers have used various stains, some are costly and some are economical. Special stains like Mallory's trichrome and Massson's trichrome are routinely used for staining various tissues. As few ingredients of Masson's Trichrome were not available, we replaced certain ingredients which were not available by readily available ingredients on an experimental basis and a study was carried out. We used Ponceau S instead of Ponceau 2R and Ehrlich's Haematoxylin instead of Weigert's Iron Haematoxylin for staining parafn sections of tongue, pituitary gland, colon, adrenal gland and hyaline cartilage. Tissues were collected from the cadavers allotted for rst year MBBS students for dissection at Dr B R Ambedkar medical college, Bangalore. After processing the tissues, parafn embedded blocks were prepared and the sections were taken and later washed in tap water followed by staining with special stains with certain ingredients replaced due to non availability. After that, sections were washed by water, dehydrated in graded alcohol, cleared in xylene and mounted in DPX and the Photographs of the slides were taken through the microscope by focusing both under low power and high power. In routine Masson's Trichrome stain, Ponceau S was used instead of Ponceau 2R because of it's non-availability. Further the cost of Ponceau S is very much lesser than Ponceau 2R. Also Ehrlich's Haematoxylin was used instead of Weigert's Iron Haematoxylin. We obsereved that various components like nuclei, cytoplasm, muscle, acidophil and basophil granules, collagen, cartilage, mucin were all well differentiated. On an experimental basis, we replaced the components Ponceau 2R by Ponceau S and Weigert's Iron Haematoxylin by Erhlich's Haematoxylin in Masson's Trichrome method of staining and various tissues were stained with good results.