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Surgical suction damage: a common tissue artifact
Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, and Oral Pathology
|May 1, 1987
Abstract:
The vacuum effect of a surgical suction tip can induce significant artifactual alterations in the connective tissue of specimens removed for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes. The alterations described in this article consist of a surgical suction artifact characterized by the formation of numerous, pleomorphic vacuoles that, on casual microscopic examination, resemble the morphology of traumatized adipose tissue. This artifact occurs when a vacuum draws air into connective tissue and mobilizes connective tissue mucins (acid mucopolysaccharides) that localize within the vacuoles that are formed.