Immunohistochemistry: Difference between revisions

*Consider additional stains from the '''"Comprehensive panel"''' displayed below the suggested one.

*Switch the '''"Sensitivity"''' setting (seen at top) from 1 (which means that diffuse, focal as well as not specified staining count as positive) to 3 (which means that only diffuse staining counts as positive whereas both focal and absent staining count as negative, and references without any specified staining pattern are omitted from the analysis). This has less data to support the suggested stains (since many references do not specify whether positivity was diffuse or focal), but can sometimes state a better distinction between conditions. When including a stain based on its distinguishing features on a sensitivity setting of 3, you need to keep the practice of classifying only diffuse staining counts as positive, and focal to absent staining as negative.

[[File:Histopathology of squamous-cell carcinoma of the lung.jpg|thumb|230px|Squamous cell carcinoma, with large cells with abundant eosinophilic cytoplasm and large, often vesicular, nuclei.]]

The attending gives you a lung biopsy case to preview. You are first uncertain about the type of tumor, so you ask a fellow resident, who finds a diagnostic area of the tumor and tells you that this is a typical squamous cell carcinoma. You also look through the patient's history, and find that the patient has had a squamous cell carcinoma of the anus in the past, and you now want to find out whether the tumor originated in the lung, or if it is a metastasis from the anus, or possibly the skin. You therefore do an ImmunoQuery lookup, with the following results: