Crystal Habit, Structure and Incidence in the Urine of a Hospital Population

Abstract

The number and size of urinary crystals have been proposed to be a factor in the propensity of urine to form renal calculi (1), and yet aside from the publications of Cifuentes (2) little factual data regarding the structure of calcium oxalate crystals in urine is available in the literature. In this paper, we report a study of the crystal habit, structure, size, relative incidence and overall incidence in the urine of patients seen in a large hospital. The methods employed consisted of light microscopy, polarized light microscopy, x-ray diffraction, electron microprobe and Auger spectroscopic analysis.