If you will notice their are a large number of squamous epithelial
cells in this 100x field of the patients sample. Squamous epithelial cells
line the mouth. If greater than 10 of these cells are present per high
powered field (100x; hpf) then the lab suspects serious contamination of
the sputum with saliva. If very few of these cells are present (<10
per hpf) the sample if more likely to be representative of what is down
in the patients lungs. The lab will also look for the presence of
white blood cells and for the predominant bacterial type in the sample.
