Fluorescence Microscopy in Colonic Exfoliative Cytology.

Since the introduction of the exfoliative cytological technique in clinical practice, particularly in the diagnosis of malignant disease of the female genital tract, many authors (Friedman, 1950; Mellors and Silver, 1951; von Bertalanffy, Masin, and Masin, 1956; Liu, 1961) have endeavoured to reduce the time required for scanning the smears by the use of fluorescent microscopy. In this new technique, they have employed fluochromes to stain the smears, and then scanned them, using an ultra-violet microscope unit. Although this technique reduces the scanning time, since the microscopist need only inspect areas on the slide which are fluorescing, recent work (Caspersson, and Santesson 1942; Bertalanffy, 1960) appears to suggest that the technique of recognizing malignant cells by demonstrating their cytochemical composition may be as reliable as the morphological criteria used by Papanicolau and Traut (1941). A series of smears has been examined using a fluorescent microscopy technique, and acridine orange, as the fluochrome with a view to reducing the time required to scan the material collected from the colon. The findings are briefly reported.