The Pap smear prepared on a glass microscope slide must be sprayed with cytology fixative immediately (within seconds). The slide should be soaked so that the fixative will begin to fall off the slide if it is tilted (don’t tilt it to see as you may lose some cells).

Many physicians avoid the problem of drying by leaving the speculum in place while they obtain their specimen, spread it on the slide and immediately fix it with spray.

If you are temporarily out of cytologic fixative, hair-spray is an acceptable alternative.

This is a problem unique to glass slide preparation. For wet preparation, in which the Pap smear broom, brush or spatula are immediately placed in liquid media and agitated to transfer their cells into the media, drying artifact is not seen.