A biopsy can reveal whether there are any cancer cells present and can help differentiate between the various types of cancer. It will not, however, tell you WHERE those cells are or if the margins are clear.
There is no need to bisect or ink the tissue because you will be cutting through the entire piece. Squeeze some OCT onto a disc on the cold bar. Once the base of the OCT has turned white, hold the biopsy specimen vertically in the OCT until it's frozen enough to stand up on its own. Add more OCT on top so that none of the tissue is exposed.
Don't worry about lining it up perfectly, just eyeball it and do your best. The FBX slide must show sections from the entire specimen, so you'll be cutting through quite a bit of tissue in between the sections that you actually pick up. Advance the wheel manually several times then use the hand-crank wheel to discard a few regular cuts before picking up a nice wafer.As always, be careful that the tissue sections are not placed on top of OCT from a previous section or it will all wash off in the stains. There won't be any tissue left to do a recut!
Repeat until you have at least 8 sections and you've cut through the entire biopsy specimen. Stain as usual.
Large Biopies
If you get a biopsy that's bigger than usual, you can save time by bisecting it and placing the halves vertically on a slide. Freeze the back of the slide and make a regular mount as if you're processing a normal mohs specimen. Since the piece is now essentially half the depth, you won't waste as much time cutting through the specimen to get your 8-10 sections.
