Poster colours: pocket-friendly alternative to tissue marking dyes

Grossing or macroscopic examination is an integral part of evaluating any surgical specimen. Tissue inking is often employed during grossing for various indications, including identification of resection margins, to assist specimen orientation and to help identify small tissue pieces at embedding. Tissue inking is usually performed using India ink or tissue marking dyes (TMDs). India ink carries the limitation of being limited to one colour, as opposed to TMDs which come in various colours. While TMDs are excellent and are well preserved after processing, they can be rather costly, especially for small laboratories in developing countries. Studies have explored alternative marking techniques which include painting with gelatin (2), commercially available oil and acrylic paints (3,4), and other routinely used dyes in histopathology laboratory such as eosin and Alcian Blue (3) as an alternative to TMDs. However, to the best of our knowledge, the use of locally available paints as alternative tissue marking techniques in Malaysia has not been explored.