Cardiac auscultation remains a critical component of the pediatric examination and is the primary method of diagnosis for the common innocent murmurs of childhood. This article outlines the significance of auscultation and defines the skills important for the diagnosis and recognition of common cardiac murmurs in childhood. The origin of heart sounds and murmurs is reviewed, and an approach to ...

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contemporary art. I’d like an Andy Warhol, but the price is not yet quite right!” D Zelko Roncevic, chief of the paediatric cardiology department, Clinical Hospital, Mostar, says, “I always have a feeling that cardiac sounds and murmurs are a kind of music. The heart has a rhythm, and the normal heart sounds have the semblance of bass guitar and drum sounds. Some heart murmurs have a musical di...

BACKGROUND During the cardiac cycle, the heart normally produces repeatable physiological sounds. However, under pathologic conditions, such as with heart valve stenosis or a ventricular septal defect, blood flow turbulence leads to the production of additional sounds, called murmurs. Murmurs are random in nature, while the underlying heart sounds are not (being deterministic). INNOVATION We ...

The systolic murmurs heard in healthy subjects used to be called " functional " murmurs. White et al. (1942) recommended the term " physiologic." Evans (1947) called these murmurs " innocent." Others have called them " incidental,' "' accidental,'' or "' murmurs of unknown origin." The decision that a systolic murmur is innocent usually depends not only on the character of the murmur itself, bu...

AIM To determine the diagnostic accuracy of physical examination by office based (general practice) paediatricians in the evaluation of heart murmurs. DESIGN Each of 30 office based paediatricians blindly examined a random sample of children with murmurs (43% of which were pathological). Sensitivity and specificity were calculated and were related to paediatricians' characteristics. RESULTS...

In this paper, a novel framework based on a time-frequency (TF) approach is proposed for detection of murmurs from heart sound signal. First, a high-resolution TF algorithm, matching pursuit, was used to decompose each heart beat into a series of TF atoms selected from a redundant dictionary. Next, representative components of murmurs were identified by clustering the selected atoms of all the ...

Many normal children have heart murmurs, but most children do not have heart disease. An appropriate history and a properly conducted physical examination can identify children at increased risk for significant heart disease. Pathologic causes of systolic murmurs include atrial and ventricular septal defects, pulmonary or aortic outflow tract abnormalities, and patent ductus arteriosus. An atri...

Many normal children have heart murmurs, but most children do not have heart disease. An appropriate history and a properly conducted physical examination can identify children at increased risk for significant heart disease. Pathologic causes of systolic murmurs include atrial and ventricular septal defects, pulmonary or aortic outflow tract abnormalities, and patent ductus arteriosus. An atri...

Cardiac auscultation is highly subjective and a cognitive process and the amount information that can be obtained by listening heart sounds largely depends on the expertise, experience and acuity of the ear of the physician. In general, the classification and interpretation of heart sounds and murmurs is based on a adjective 0-6/6 grade scale and described by using “faint”, “soft”, “loud”, “ hi...