title: Method to obtain endoscopic esophageal samples for primary cell culture: focus on infectious contamination.
abstract: Cell culture techniques hold great importance for the development of molecular biology. However, when used to study oncology, most of the samples come from surgical specimens. Endoscopy is a interesting alternative to get samples for culture. We studied a protocol to allow the control of infectious contamination potentially related to endoscopy, which could preclude it as a method to obtain cells for culture. Esophageal biopsies from 30 patients were taken through upper gastrointestinal endoscopy, using a previously flamed forceps, and were cultivated with and without amphotericin. Our results showed contamination in 3.3% of the wells without the antifungal and in 0.8% of those with it. Regarding the 30 cases studied, the described protocol was able to provide samples free of contamination in all of them.
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Pesquisas Biomédicas, Faculdade de Medicina/Hospital São Lucas, Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre-RS, Brasil.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Constant-Neto
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Falavigna
authors.forename: A C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Castro
authors.forename: D C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Machado
mesh_terms: D001706:Biopsy / Q000379:methods*; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D004945:Esophagoscopy; D004947:Esophagus / Q000166:cytology*; D006801:Humans; D013048:Specimen Handling / Q000379:methods*