The influence of post-mortem fixation delay on the reliability of the Golgi silver impregnation.
Brains of guinea-pigs were studied using the rapid Golgi technique after formol fixation. The delay between death and fixation varied from 5 min to 24 h. A considerable drop in density of spines on the apical, basal and oblique dendrites of pyramidal V cells was found from 1.5 h onwards. The total length of the basal dendrite arborization showed a reduction after 4 h. It was concluded that, particularly for quantitative methods, a fixation delay of more than 4 h makes results progressively less reliable.
D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology*; D003712:Dendrites / Q000648:ultrastructure; D006056:Golgi Apparatus / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D006168:Guinea Pigs; D009474:Neurons / Q000166:cytology; D011180:Postmortem Changes; D012834:Silver; D013194:Staining and Labeling; D013997:Time Factors
D012834:Silver