Performing In-house Cytology: What Equipment Do I Need?

Anne Barger, DVM, MS, DACVP, clinical professor in pathobiology at University of Illinois, discusses the equipment that veterinarians need to perform in-house cytology in their practices.

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

“Some of the equipment that is needed for cytology [is] inexpensive, [and] that’s one of the advantages. You need a needle and syringe, you need glass slides, you need Diff-Quick, and you need a microscope. One of the things that most practices already have [is] a microscope, and the objectives that you need for cytology is a 10X, a 40X, and a 100X; the 100X uses oil.

A complaint that I get from a lot of practitioners about their microscopes is that their 40X looks kind of blurry; I would just remind people that that objective is designed to be used with a cover slip. If we just put a cover slip on the slide with the 40X, it’ll improve the quality of the image and the quality of the objective tremendously.”