Histological assessment of microtia cartilage, a potential source of autograft tissue in ear reconstruction.

Cartilage is a strong and flexible connective tissue that has many forms and functions in our body. While cartilage exhibits some forms of limited repair, for the most part, it is not particularly regenerative. Thus, in situations where patients require cartilage reconstruction, surgeons may use autografts to replace missing or damaged tissue.

The use of commercially available adhesive tapes to preserve cartilage and bone tissue integrity during cryosectioning.

The use of fluorescent tags to monitor protein expression and to lineage-trace cells has become a standard complement to standard histological techniques in the fields of embryology, pathology and regenerative medicine. Unfortunately, traditional paraffin embedding protocols can substantially diminish or abolish the native emission signal of the fluorophore of interest. To preserve the fluorescent signal, an alternative is to use cryosectioning; however, this can often result in undesirable artefacts such as tearing or shattering - particularly for mineralized tissues such as bone and cartilage.