One advantage of the paraffin technique is that:

• A. Serial sections are easy to obtain
• B. It improves staining color
• C. It reduces processing time dramatically
• D. It eliminates dehydration

Answer: (A)

The main advantage is that the wax-embedded tissue in paraffin provides solid, uniform support, which makes reliable, consecutive slices easy to obtain. This stability lets you cut many ultra-thin sections in sequence (serial sections) from the same block, enabling you to examine different depths of the tissue or to prepare multiple slides from one specimen without the tissue distorting. Staining color is more a function of the staining protocol than the embedding medium, so paraffin doesn’t inherently improve color. Processing time isn’t dramatically reduced by embedding in paraffin, since fixation, dehydration, clearing, infiltration, and embedding add considerable time. Dehydration is actually required before paraffin infiltration, not eliminated.