Electronic stethoscopes: Brief review of clinical utility, evidence, and future implications

Landge, Karishma; Kidambi, Bharath Raj; Singhal, Abhinav; Basha, Aseem

doi:10.4103/jpcs.jpcs_47_18

Cited by 12 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Every electronic stethoscope has a basic design consisting of three modules - the data acquisition module, the pre-processing module and the signal processing module. [ 3 4 5 6 7 ] The data acquisition module consists of the sensor, amplifier, filter and analogue to digital converter. The sensor is usually either a microphone or a piezoelectric crystal.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of the electronic stethoscope (FONODOC) as a cardiac screening tool during the preoperative evaluation of children

Nileshwar¹,

Ahuja²,

Kini³

2022

Indian Journal of Anaesthesia

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Background and Aims: An electronic stethoscope with an inbuilt phonocardiogram is a potentially useful tool for paediatric cardiac evaluation in a resource-limited setting. We aimed to compare the acoustic and electronic stethoscopes with respect to the detection of murmurs as compared to the transthoracic echocardiogram (TTE). Methods: This was an observational study. Fifty children aged 0–12 years with congenital heart diseases (CHDs) and 50 without CHD scheduled for echocardiography were examined using both stethoscopes. The findings were corroborated with clinical findings and compared with the echocardiography report. Results: Among the 50 cases without CHD, no murmur was detected using either of the stethoscopes. This was in agreement with TTE findings. The calculated specificity of both stethoscopes was 100%. Amongst the 50 cases with CHD, the electronic stethoscope picked up murmurs in 32 cases and missed 18 cases. The acoustic stethoscope picked up murmurs in 29 cases and missed 21 cases. Thus, the sensitivity of electronic and acoustic stethoscopes as compared to TTE was calculated to be 64% and 58%, respectively. The positive predictive value of the electronic stethoscope as compared to TTE was 100% while the negative predictive value was 73%. The kappa statistic was 0.93 suggesting agreement in 93%. Mc-Nemar’s test value was 0.24 suggesting that the electronic stethoscope did not offer any advantage over the acoustic stethoscope for the detection of CHD in children. Conclusion: A comparison of the electronic stethoscope with an acoustic stethoscope suggests that the rate of detection of CHD with both stethoscopes is similar and echocardiography remains the gold standard.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of the electronic stethoscope (FONODOC) as a cardiac screening tool during the preoperative evaluation of children

Nileshwar¹,

Ahuja²,

Kini³

2022

Indian Journal of Anaesthesia

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“…An analogue stethoscope consists of the chest piece and the binaural earpiece, with the bell and diaphragm used for picking up lower-and higher-frequency sounds, respectively [13]. Thereafter, sound waves are propagated via the hollow tubing to the binaural earpiece, providing audio output to both ears [14][15][16]. Takashina et al also found that adding an ethylene propylene diene monomer as an extensible diaphragm increases the efficiency of sound analysis [17].…”

Section: Analogue Stethoscopementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Its relative ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and wide availability for purchase by paramedics and nurses makes it a popular choice for healthcare workers [14]. There are, however, limitations with this popular choice.…”

Section: Analogue Stethoscopementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Traditional stethoscopes have varying degrees of sound quality when used on obese patients and patients with thick chest walls, as they tend to have poorer sound quality feedback. Additionally, any circuitry malfunction in the sound pathway can attenuate or eliminate sound transmission, such as an air leak from the hollow tubing or the binaural earpiece [14,15].…”

Section: Analogue Stethoscopementioning

confidence: 99%

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Review on the Advancements of Stethoscope Types in Chest Auscultation

et al. 2023

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Stethoscopes were originally designed for the auscultation of a patient’s chest for the purpose of listening to lung and heart sounds. These aid medical professionals in their evaluation of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, as well as in other applications, such as listening to bowel sounds in the gastrointestinal system or assessing for vascular bruits. Listening to internal sounds during chest auscultation aids healthcare professionals in their diagnosis of a patient’s illness. We performed an extensive literature review on the currently available stethoscopes specifically for use in chest auscultation. By understanding the specificities of the different stethoscopes available, healthcare professionals can capitalize on their beneficial features, to serve both clinical and educational purposes. Additionally, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted the unique application of digital stethoscopes for telemedicine. Thus, the advantages and limitations of digital stethoscopes are reviewed. Lastly, to determine the best available stethoscopes in the healthcare industry, this literature review explored various benchmarking methods that can be used to identify areas of improvement for existing stethoscopes, as well as to serve as a standard for the general comparison of stethoscope quality. The potential use of digital stethoscopes for telemedicine amidst ongoing technological advancements in wearable sensors and modern communication facilities such as 5G are also discussed. Based on the ongoing trend in advancements in wearable technology, telemedicine, and smart hospitals, understanding the benefits and limitations of the digital stethoscope is an essential consideration for potential equipment deployment, especially during the height of the current COVID-19 pandemic and, more importantly, for future healthcare crises when human and resource mobility is restricted.

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“…With the recent advancement in electronic technology, the digital stethoscope is gaining popularity day-by-day [12]. There are different types of digital stethoscopes [13,14,15,16] that have been industrialized to replace its analog counterpart. Electronic stethoscopes can provide better sound quality with variable amplification, minimize interference noise, and provide data for visualization and storage.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Real-Time Smart-Digital Stethoscope System for Heart Diseases Monitoring

Chowdhury

Khandakar

Alzoubi

et al. 2019

Sensors

129

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One of the major causes of death all over the world is heart disease or cardiac dysfunction. These diseases could be identified easily with the variations in the sound produced due to the heart activity. These sophisticated auscultations need important clinical experience and concentrated listening skills. Therefore, there is an unmet need for a portable system for the early detection of cardiac illnesses. This paper proposes a prototype model of a smart digital-stethoscope system to monitor patient’s heart sounds and diagnose any abnormality in a real-time manner. This system consists of two subsystems that communicate wirelessly using Bluetooth low energy technology: A portable digital stethoscope subsystem, and a computer-based decision-making subsystem. The portable subsystem captures the heart sounds of the patient, filters and digitizes, and sends the captured heart sounds to a personal computer wirelessly to visualize the heart sounds and for further processing to make a decision if the heart sounds are normal or abnormal. Twenty-seven t-domain, f-domain, and Mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) features were used to train a public database to identify the best-performing algorithm for classifying abnormal and normal heart sound (HS). The hyper parameter optimization, along with and without a feature reduction method, was tested to improve accuracy. The cost-adjusted optimized ensemble algorithm can produce 97% and 88% accuracy of classifying abnormal and normal HS, respectively.

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Electronic stethoscopes: Brief review of clinical utility, evidence, and future implications

Cited by 12 publications

References 3 publications

Evaluation of the electronic stethoscope (FONODOC) as a cardiac screening tool during the preoperative evaluation of children

Evaluation of the electronic stethoscope (FONODOC) as a cardiac screening tool during the preoperative evaluation of children

Review on the Advancements of Stethoscope Types in Chest Auscultation

Real-Time Smart-Digital Stethoscope System for Heart Diseases Monitoring

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