Evaluation of the Effect of a New Skin Fixation Technique to Avoid Shrinkage of Skin Samples Obtained from Canine Cadavers

Abstract

Skin shrinkage begins immediately after surgical incision and is an artefact associated with the excision and fixation of a specimen. Skin shrinkage results in important changes in histologic tissue dimensions and can affect the correct quantification of the histologic tumour-free margin (HTFM). Bilateral and symmetrical circular skin samples with a diameter of 60 mm were taken from the lateral thoracic, flank and femoral regions of dog cadavers, with the samples from one side belonging to the study group and the samples from the same animal from the other side belonging to the control group. The radius and diameter of the specimen were measured immediately after the excision and 10 min later for each sample. The measurements of the study group were taken again after manual re-extension and fixation on a cork plate before formalin fixation and 48 h after formalin fixation. A total of 66 (33 study and 33 control group) samples were collected from 11 canine cadavers. The mean diameter shrinkage after formalin fixation was 18.24% for the control group and 0.64% for the study group. A statistically significant difference between the study and the control group was found (p < 0.001). This method of specimen fixation in the study group avoided skin shrinkage and deformation of the specimen in formalin, which we believe improves the diagnostic accuracy of surgical margins and, thus, reduces the number of false-positive or false-negative HTFM.

Keywords

• dogs
• histological tumour-free margin
• skin shrinkage
• surgical margins
• tumour surgery