The Clinical Pathology Laboratory at the University Hospital "St. Marina" - Pleven has four medical laboratory technicians, two technical assistants and four doctors with a specialty in pathology. The facility consists of two medical offices and four separate rooms distributed as follows:
1. Biopsy Laboratory - biopsy materials are obtained from the surgical departments and prepared for processing, which is performed by a pathologist with the assistance of a laboratory technician.
We have a cryostat machine for emergency biopsy studies.
2. Pathology laboratory - is equipped with two microtomes which are used to prepare microscopic preparations from paraffin blocks.
3. Histology laboratory - equipped with the following equipment:
- Histokinet, used to process biopsy materials by a process of clarification, dehydration, and paraffin impregnation;
- Paraffin station - materials are embedded in paraffin using metal moulds, then placed on a freezing station to speed up curing;
- Autocuring device - an automatic device for dewaxing and staining microscope preparations. It contains the necessary reagents and dyes to produce stained microscope slides. The device has separate carriers on which the slides prepared for staining are stacked.
The histology laboratory also has two thermostats used for fixing the prepared microscope slides and for melting paraffin.
5. Immunohistochemistry laboratory - equipped with:
- PT-Link machine - used for antigen retrieval. It contains two types of buffers - high and low pH. Slides are arranged on special media adapted to the wells in the machine and placed in the appropriate buffer;
- Plastic container with rinse buffer - the slides are placed in it after the process is completed in the PT-Link machine. It serves to cool the specimens;
- Auto-adhesive device - used to apply the appropriate antibodies to the microscope slides. The antibodies are stacked in a basket adapted to the machine;
- Computer - used to label the slides with the appropriate antibodies and to run the autosampler duty cycle program.