To cite: Barnard EBG, Rimmer J, McD Johnston A. Thorax 2013;68:794–795. Three patients with unusual additional sounds heard on auscultation of the precordium were admitted to a military hospital in Afghanistan. Patient 1: A male in his 20s was shot in his left flank. Injuries included a left haemothorax and visceral injuries. An intercostal drain (ICD) was inserted. After surgery, he was admitt...

BACKGROUND The presence of primary intracardiac tumors are scarce, and most of them are myxomas. We reported, in this paper, a case with huge mass in the right side of the heart. CASE REPORT A 45-year-old man, with a complaint of bilateral lower limbs edema and exertional dyspnea, was admitted to intensive cardiac care unit. Cardiac auscultation revealed soft grade systolic murmur without any...

Auscultation of the heart is accompanied by both electrical activity and sound. Heart auscultation provides clues to diagnose many cardiac abnormalities. Unfortunately, detection of relevant symptoms and diagnosis based on heart sound through a stethoscope is difficult. The reason GPs find this difficult is that the heart sounds are of short duration and separated from one another by less than ...

We are developing an intelligent tutoring environment to teach cardiac auscultation; it will allow students to learn by doingg, while being guided by an expert car-diologist. Auscultation is the process of listening to the body for sounds, and using those sounds as clues to diagnosis. Tutoring auscultation is a diicult task because students must be taught to hear new sounds, and to understand t...

INTRODUCTION Heart murmurs can be functional (innocent) and pathological (organic). Although it is not considered a major sign of heart disease, it may be a sign of a serious heart defect. In most cases the noise is initiation for cardiac treatment. Is it possible to differentiate on the basis of auscultation innocent from pathological heart murmur? In this article we present the results of ult...

During annual physical examinations, a primary-care physician listens to the heart using a stethoscope to assess the condition of the heart muscle and valves. This process, termed cardiac auscultation, is the primary means of diagnosing cardiac disorders, the most common of which is Mitral Valve Prolapse (MVP). Yet, the practice of auscultation is highly fallible with reports of more than 80% o...

Cardiac auscultation remains an important part of clinical medicine. The standard acoustic stethoscope, which has been useful for more than a century, cannot process, store, and play back sounds or provide visual display, and teaching is hindered because there is no means to distribute the same sounds simultaneously to more than one listener. Modern portable and inexpensive tools are now availa...

BACKGROUND The aims of this study were to establish the prevalence of innocent cardiac murmurs in clinically healthy puppies, to investigate a possible correlation between the presence of an innocent murmur and hematocrit, and to describe the auscultation characteristics of innocent murmurs. HYPOTHESIS Lower hematocrit contributes to the genesis of innocent murmurs. ANIMALS Five hundred and...