Accuracy of Cardiac Auscultation by Microwave

¹ Clinical Professor of Occupational Medicine, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston
² Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School
³ Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
⁴ Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Telemedicine, the practice of medicine at a distance, offers the opportunity to facilitate cardiac consultation in remote areas to alleviate existing shortages of qualified specialists. For such consultation to be useful, accurate transmission of auscultatory findings is essential. To study this accuracy, auscultation of the heart was carried out on patients with heart murmurs and normal controls through the use of a standard stethoscope and a telestethoscope. The telestethoscope allowed auscultation by an observer situated 2.7 miles away from the 50 subjects. The observer was unaware of the status of the subject with respect to "patient" or "control" at the time of the teleauscultation. All murmurs of grade 2/6 or more were easily and accurately described using telestethoscope. Two of the 32 grade 1/6 murmurs were not heard. This study indicates that the telestethoscope is a potentially useful tool for extending the availability of the cardiologist to medically disadvantaged areas.