The Stethoscope and the Echocardiogram - How they Interdigitate

Daniel Mason, M.D.

Drexel university College of Medicine

ABSTRACT:

A demonstration of several auscultatory examples and how their correlative echocardiographic depictions in real time validate what previously often were presumptive diagnoses of heart sounds and murmurs. These are clinical studies; there are no simulations. A skilled auscultator may thus definitively make accurate diagnoses without the need and expense of performing an echocardiographic study.

I can transmit heart sounds and murmurs via infrared transmission to a very large [or small as the case may be] group with fidelity, namely with the listener hearing EXACTLY what he/she would hear if the stethoscope were applied directly to the precordium. This is accomplished by using infrared stethophones thus enabling large groups to listen simultaneously to a patient or - as in the case of the Slice program - to high fidelity digital tape recordings from a vast number of normal, variations from normal, and abnormal auscultatory events. Also, I have been able to dissect various "complicated" cardiac cycle examples and then reconstruct the findings [a most helpful technique- especially for the novice auscultator!] I have a virtual encyclopedia of examples.

BENEFIT TO PARTICIPANTS ATTENDING SESSION:

Daniel Mason, M.D.

Drexel University College of Medicine, 227 N. Broad St. Philadelphia, Pa, 19107

Phone: 215 564 3050

Fax: 215 564 4627

Email: mailto:masond@pol.net