OBJECTIVES In recent years, the use and portability of ultrasound has threatened the utility of the stethoscope, with many debating and even advocating its replacement. The authors set out to assess opinions in this regard among faculty within a medical school and specifically within an anatomy department where ultrasound is incorporated into the curriculum from the first term. METHODS A deba...

BACKGROUND A decrease in core body temperature caused by heat distribution depends on the anesthetic agent used. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of sevoflurane and propofol on core temperature during laparoscopic major abdominal surgery requiring pneumoperitoneum of more than 90 min. METHODS Fifty adult patients undergoing laparoscopic major abdominal surgery were rand...

IT is an anachronism that the stethoscope, introduced in 1819, remains an indispensable medical tool today although no standards have ever been set for its acoustical performance.' Neither has a standard test been established for evaluating the acoustics of the intact instrument. Furthermore, there is no information on the intimate acoustical interaction of the stethoscope with the doctors' ear...

INTRODUCTION This study aimed to assess the impact of a stethoscope disinfection sensitization campaign among doctors and nurses in a Nigerian teaching hospital. METHODOLOGY The design was a before-and-after study. Pre-program measurements were used to provide a baseline against which the post-program results were compared. Interventions that promoted compliance with stethoscope disinfection ...

BACKGROUND Ankle-brachial index (ABI) is an excellent method for the diagnosis of peripheral arterial disease (PAD) when it is performed with Doppler. However, this device is not always available for primary care physicians. The ABI measured with stethoscope is an easy alternative approach, but have not been proved to be useful. OBJECTIVE To assess the accuracy of the ABI measured using a ste...

Physical cardiovascular examination, particularly cardiac auscultation, is one of the most difficult clinical skills for students during their medical training. Studies suggest that the use of technologies such as digital stethoscope increase the accuracy of clinical examination, however, its impact on the teaching of cardiac auscultation for undergraduate students of medicine is not known. The...

To the Editor: Contamination of stethoscopes by skin flora has been described previously. 1 The predominant organisms recovered from stethoscope diaphragms were Staphylococcus epider-midis and Staphylococcus aureus. Previous studies documented the status of contamination of the stethoscope diaphragm with microorganisms only once, and no repeat sampling was performed. 1 The dynamic of contaminat...