Take a very deep breath and hold the air for 5 seconds, this is followed by slow breathe out and take another deep breath and cough hard until some sputum comes up into your mouth. The quality of sputum samples is determined by the minimum number of squamous epithelial cells and polymorphonuclear leukocytes per low power field. An acceptable specimen has more than 25 leukocytes and fewer than 10 epithelial cells per low power field.