The microwave oven in temporal bone research.

The microwave oven has recently been introduced in morphological research. It can be used for virtually all procedures in histological processing; fixation, dehydration, embedding, staining, immunotechniques, and the techniques used for electron microscopy. Here we report that the microwave oven histoprocedures also have several advantages in temporal bone research on animals. The microwave oven has been tested for (i) fixation, (ii) decalcification, (ii) staining of semithin plastic sections. The microwave oven procedures are time-saving and results in an excellent preservation of the tissues. The microwave histoprocessing should also be applicable to temporal bone research in human.