STAINING, PRACTICAL AND THEORETICAL 



Bertalanffy of the Department of Anatomy, University of Mani- 

 toba, Winnipeg, Canada. 



Samples of sputum, bronchial excretions, gastric washings, 

 urine, vaginal and curvical aspirates, etc., alvv^ays contain normal 

 epithelial cells. When malignant tumours arise in epithelial 

 structures, tumour cells likewise desquamate and mingle with 

 normal cells. Bertalanffy (i960) states that in recent years cancer 

 diagnosis by exfoliative cytology has found increasing clinical 

 appHcation both in the form of large-scale screening in hospitals 

 as well as, to a smaller extent, in private practice. However, the 

 private medical practitioner has to rely upon the services of a 

 cytological laboratory to which the exfoliative specimens are 

 submitted, the reason for this being the lack of trained cytologists. 

 Because of the high costs involved in routinely submitting to a 

 cytological laboratory exfoliative material for evaluation, Bertal- 

 anffy states, many physicians may forego cytological cancer 

 diagnosis, to the misfortune of the malignant cases that could 

 have been cytologically diagnosed earlier. It is claimed that the 

 acridine orange fluorescence method makes it possible for the 

 physician or his technician, both of whom may be relatively 

 untrained in cytology, to perform pre-screening of routinely 

 collected exfoliative specimens. Only six minutes are required for 

 the preparation of a specimen for examination with the fluor- 

 escence microscope, and if an average of three minutes is allowed 

 for screening, a diagnosis may be obtained in less than ten 

 minutes. 



In this way, the author states, most normal samples can be 

 discarded, leaving the number of samples to be submitted to a 

 cytological laboratory greatly reduced, and in consequence a 

 proportionate saving in costs of cytodiagnosis is effected. 



The high mortality rate in cancer can be effectively lowered, the 

 author states, only by early diagnosis, and this can be effected m 

 two ways: 



1. By routine cytodiagnosis by the physician. 



2. By mass screening programmes for large proportions of the 

 population. 



Whereas conventional cytodiagnostic techniques are based 

 primarily upon morphological criteria, the fluorescence method 

 utilizes cytochemical changes in malignant cells. Because the 



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