Dropper method for cytology slide staining: An effective and sustainable approach to eliminating cross contamination

Cytopathology laboratories must ensure effective measures to prevent cross-contamination during slide staining. As such, slides with high potential for cross-contamination are usually stained separately, by dipping slides into a series of Romanowsky-type stains, with periodic (usually weekly) filtering and replacement of stains used. Our 5-year experience and a validation study of an alternative dropper method is presented. In this method, cytology slides are placed in a staining rack, a small amount of stain is applied to each using a dropper. Because of the small amount of stain used, this dropper method requires no filtering or reuse of stain, eliminating the possibility of cross contamination and reducing the total amount of stain used. In our 5-year experience, we report a complete elimination of cross contamination due to staining, excellent staining quality, and a slight reduction in overall stain expenditure.