a large amount of retrograde flow in the femoral artery. Those subjects without significant aortic insufficiency and no Duroziez's murmur had little or no backflow. When only a moderate amount of aortic insufficiency was present, the correlation was less satisfactory. In some subjects who had femoral backflow, a second recording was made from the femoral artery after the aortic valve had been r...

A popular saying holds that if one can hear a heart murmur in the middle of a loud and busy emergency department, then by definition the murmur is significant. Whether or not this is actually true, it does capture the frustration emergency physicians feel when trying to diagnose or manage valvular pathologic conditions with familiar yet limited tools. This article focuses on the valve-related i...

The diagnosis of patent ductus arteriosus is difficult when the classic continuous murmur is not present. In infancy, in the presence of cardiac decompensation and when the ductus approximates the aorta in size, the continuous murmur is frequently absent. A correct diagnosis may be important, however, for a large patent ductus arteriosus can cause serious difficulty. Early surgical treatment ma...

In this paper, we present the use of stethoscope and silicon NAM microphones in automatic speech recognition. NAM microphones are special acoustic sensors, which are attached behind the talker’s ear and can capture not only normal (audible) speech, but also very quietly uttered speech (non-audible murmur). As a result, NAM microphones can be applied in automatic speech recognition systems when ...