What is a "processed tissue block"? If a medical examiner uses this term, or phrase, what are they talking about? Is it an actual body part that is being preserved by the medical examiner? If so, how are these parts preserve
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Anonymous
ANSWERS: 2
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It's a tissue sample preserved in a block, then sliced very thin for examination after staining. The best explanation of that process is actually on wikipedia's entry on 'histology' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histology) It's routinely a sample of a body part (heart muscle, lung tissue, etc), not the entire thing, although that is possible. Pathologists can look at the thin tissue slice and hopefully determine what was the cause of death. Good question - interesting!
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Great answer by Teri...I can add a little bit to that answer. The advantage of the "tissue block" is that the medical examiner doesn't need to save the entire organ unless they are specifically asked to (unidentified body, some homicide cases, etc). The tissue block can be kept indefinitely (or until it is completely used up by making additional copies of slides). The tissue is placed in a plastic cassette, and retained (generally) in formalin which is a preservative. The histologist will take the tissue and "fix" it (set it) in paraffin (like wax) and the microscopic slides and stains are then created from that block. The same block can be used over and over to create multiple slides from the same section of the organ, if needed. However, something that most lawyers don't like to hear, in order to re-create the slides, the medical examiner may require a subpoena since there technically is a finite amount of tissue in that block. Once it's gone, it's gone.
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