[A new punch technique of cartilage-bone tissue for morphological studies in orthopedics]

A new technique is presented for the analysis of tissues which allows an exact, detailed comparison of light and electron microscopy. For this purpose, the previous techniques required the cutting of tissue pieces from the original tissue compound and the preparation of drawings as a rough localisation of the tissue pieces removed for analysis. Due to the processes of cutting and drawing, only an approximate localisation of the tissue investigated by electron microscopy was practicable. Specifically, the exact analysis of fetal cartilage-bone-tissue was mostly not possible due to the complicate arrangement of both tissue components. Therefore, the assessment of electron microscopic analyses was severely limited. The new technique, presented in this study, is characterised by a removal of punches 1 mm in diameter from the original tissue for electron microscopy. The remaining tissue with its exact defined punch-punctures is prepared for standard histology. Thus, the specific advantage of this new method is the precise attribution of the punched tissue to the original tissue group. Human fetal cartilage-bone-tissue has been used to demonstrate this punch-technique and the specific light- and electron microscopic preparations.