Goodbye stethoscope: hello digital age.
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STOCKHOLM: MP3 players detect some respiratory sounds better than traditional stethoscopes and could prove handy replacements in the future, said researchers at an international respiratory disease conference.
Stethoscopes date back almost 200 years. However, with higher quality sound from MP3 players that have a recording function, some clinical sounds can be better heard, stored on computers and shared, suggested medical doctor Neil Skjodt and audiologist Bill Hodgetts both of the University of Alberta in Canada.
Clear and pure
By pressing a microphone directly to the chest, the researchers were able to record a whole range of respiratory sounds with different patterns, they said.
"The quality, clarity and purity of the loud sounds were better than I have ever heard with a stethoscope," said Skjodt at European Respiratory Society's (ERS) annual congress in Stockholm on Tuesday. "The MP3 files were later transferred to a computer and converted into frequency curves. Computer analysis of the stored sounds showed that each had a a distinct signature."
However, like a human ear, the computer sometimes had difficulty in processing complex or quiet breathing sounds, the researchers added.
Reproduce and store
They decided to conduct the experiment after several studies showed that health care staff generally had mediocre auditory faculties, especially when using stethoscopes. One of the studies showed that medical students sometimes had to listen to certain clinical sounds up to 500 times before they could diagnose them accurately.
Skjodt said that in addition to providing better quality sound, the use of MP3s also enabled doctors to reproduce or store the sounds heard during a medical consultation or even transmit them to a databank so other doctors could refer to them. Even modern, digital stethoscopes are outperformed by MP3s, the researchers said.
According to the ERS, respiratory diseases are a major cause of death in the world. In Europe, respiratory diseases cost society more than 100 billion euros (A$164 billion) a year.
A total of 15,000 clinical doctors, researchers, physiotherapists and medical and pharmaceutical industry workers from more than 100 countries are attending the congress in Stockholm, which concludes on Wednesday.
