Six Pieces of Lab Equipment that Are Important in Handling Testing Samples

Do you ever find yourself wondering what happens when your blood or skin samples make it to the lab for testing?  Diagnostic labs are full of tools, equipment, and many other supplies to ensure safe and proper handling of your samples so that we can provide quality testing services.  As a dermatology pathology lab service in Dallas, TX, we work to provide reliable testing to many dermatology practices.  This enables us to provide them with data and information needed to diagnose patients.  There are a few important pieces of lab equipment that make our job possible.

Centrifuge

Centrifuges are used in many lab settings to separate liquids, gases, or other fluids based on their density.  Many people most commonly recognize centrifuges for their ability to separate plasma from the rest of blood.  In lab settings, these devices are used for cell, organelle, protein, and virus purification for further testing.

Hot Plate Stirrer

This important piece of equipment is used to continuously stir liquids to keep them circulating as they are simultaneously heated.  These two occurrences make the chemical reaction occur much quicker and more evenly, which can provide for better testing samples.  

Slide Warmer

When most people think of pathology labs, they hark back to their middle school days, hunched over a microscope looking at cell samples on small slides.  Laboratories have many slides, and they also use a slide warmer to keep them in optimal shape.  Slide warmers keep slides at a warm, desired temperature that is safe for fixing, drying, or staining the samples.  

Tissue Water Bath

A warm water bath, that the tissue water bath equipment creates, allows for tissues to relax and smooth out before they are placed onto slides for testing purposes.  The warm water allows the paraffin to stick to the surface of the slide much better.  The type of tissue that is being tested will determine the temperature of the water that is required in the tissue water bath equipment.  

Paraffin Trimmer

The paraffin trimmer removes any extra paraffin from the tissue sample, biopsy sample, or other biological contents.  This equipment allows the safe and clean removal of the extra paraffin, which spares lab technicians from having to use the less effective paring knife to do the job.  

Paraffin Dispenser

The paraffin dispenser is another piece of important equipment that melts and dispenses the paraffin throughout the tissue sample.  This is done prior to sectioning the sample onto slides for testing.  It is important to keep the dispenser in the lab to make paraffin much more accessible and readily available when it is needed.

These are just a few of the basic types of equipment that are used to perform tests and properly handle tissue samples in a lab setting.  At our dermatology pathology lab service in Dallas, TX, we work with many skin tissue samples by using this equipment to perform quality testing.  Contact us to hear more about our testing capabilities and services today.