Systolic Murmurs in Children

The general practitioner has to deal almost daily in his work with the problem of systolic murmurs. He finds such murmurs often in apparently healthy children during a routine check and is then confronted by the question whether to consider these murmurs as of no importance, or to investigate further. There exists a wide discrepancy among publications on the incidence of systolic murmurs in children in general, the percentage varying from 20% to more than 90% (Lessof and Brigden, 1957). Also on the prevalence of what are termed 'innocent' systolic murmurs, Fogel (1957) quotes a range of 8 o to 866% from various studies. In order to throw further light on the problem the authors have surveyed the child population of 13 rural settlements and two educational institutions in the Haifa area with regard to the finding of systolic cardiac murmurs.