An Effect of Variations in Time of Using Harris Hematoxylin on Papanicolaou Staining

Abstract

Cytology is the science that studies the morphology of individual cells or cells from tissue fragments that are observed microscopically. This branch of science, especially cytopathology, is very dependent on the quality of the results of cytol-ogy preparations for the validity of the diagnosis. One of the stains used in cytol-ogy is the Papanicolaou stain, which is very important for the early detection of oral and cervical cancer. This stain used Harris hematoxylin, which is able to provide very clear nuclear details. The aim of this study was to identify the effect of variations in the time of use of Harris hematoxylin on Papanicolaou staining. The variable tested in this study was the staining time using Harris hematoxylin solution at intervals of 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, and 10 minutes. Obser-vations were made on the quality of the resulting staining, which was measured based on the clarity of the cytoplasm and cell nuclei. The method used is analyti-cal observation using a cross-sectional design. The population in this study were undergraduate students of applied medical laboratory technology, using 1 sample with a total of 24 repetitions. The results showed that variations in coloring time had a significant effect on the quality of Papanicolaou coloring. Based on re-search carried out within 7 minutes, the results showed that the cytoplasm was stained light pink and the dark blue cell nuclei were clearly visible. The conclu-sion is that there was an influence on the staining results on oral mucosa exami-nation with variations in the time of use of Harris hematoxylin for Papanicolaou staining.