Technical aspects of lymphoma immunohistology

Abstract

Immunohistological techniques (i.e., based on tissue sections) for the study of human lymphoma have been developed in recent years as alternatives to immunocytochemical methods (based on cell suspensions). These techniques not only allow the important architectural features of the lymphoma sample to be preserved, but are also more convenient to use in that tissues can be processed rapidly and studied at leisure. The relative advantages and disadvantages of frozen versus fixed embedded tissue, and of immunofluorescence versus immunoenzymatic methods are reviewed, and technical aspects of proteolytic digestion (as a technique for enhancing immunohistochemical labeling) are discussed. This review concludes with a consideration of the problems encountered in the interpretation of immunohistochemical labeling for lymphoma cell immunoglobulin in paraffin sections.