BACKGROUND The ability of medical students to recognize heart murmurs is poor (20%), and does not improve with subsequent years of training. A teaching method to improve this skill would be useful. STUDY OBJECTIVES To determine whether intensive repetition of four basic cardiac murmurs improves auscultatory proficiency in medical students. DESIGN Controlled intervention study. SUBJECTS Fi...

A new method and application is proposed to characterize intensity and pitch of human heart sounds and murmurs. Using recorded heart sounds from the library of one of the authors, a visual map of heart sound energy was established. Both normal and abnormal heart sound recordings were studied. Representation is based on Wigner-Ville joint time-frequency transformations. The proposed methodology ...

UNLABELLED The extent of congenital heart disease in Cameroon remains largely unknown. The aim of this study was to determine the occurrence and pattern of congenital heart diseases in the Cardiac Centre of St Elizabeth Catholic General Hospital, situated in a rural area of Cameroon. METHODS Between November 2002 and November 2008, a population of 2 123 patients with suspected cardiac patholo...

Using tracking dogs to locate wild Florida panthers, Howard and other National Zoo researchers conducted reproductive exams on many free-ranging panthers and animals that had been killed. Results indicated that the animals had severe reproductive problems, including extremely poor semen quality with low sperm numbers and high sperm abnormalities. The Florida pumas also had severe health problem...

OBJECTIVE The origin of innocent systolic murmurs is uncertain. This study was designed to evaluate the relative contribution in the same subjects of the main factors implicated in the genesis of vibratory innocent systolic murmurs--that is, the presence of left ventricular bands and increased left ventricular flow indices--and to examine evidence for turbulence in relation to these findings. ...

Background: Pericardial effusion and cardiac tamponade are the rare complications of peripherally inserted central catheters (PICC insertion) in extreme low birth weight infants. In this regard, paying attention to these complications is of utmost importance, because they can result in infant death. Case report: The case of our infant is a sa...

Optimizing risk assessment may reduce use of advanced diagnostic testing in patients with symptoms suggestive of stable coronary artery disease (CAD). Detection of diastolic murmurs from post-stenotic coronary turbulence with an acoustic sensor placed on the chest wall can serve as an easy, safe, and low-cost supplement to assist in the diagnosis of CAD. Coronary artery disease (CAD) accounts f...

A dog or a cat has an incidentally detected heart murmur if the murmuris an unexpected discovery during a veterinary consultation that was not initially focused on the cardiovascular system. This document presents approaches for managing dogs and cats that have incidentally-detected heart murmurs, with an emphasis on murmur characteristics, signalment profiling, and multifactorial decision-maki...

“The physiologic capabilities of the heart are enormous, and in judging the effect of any undue exertion on it, we must not regard the murmurs of the irregularity alone, but must also consider carefully, the way in which the heart is doing its work, its strength, as shown by its ability to maintain proper arterial tension, and its recuperative power. As with other muscles, not size but quality ...