Cardiac auscultation: Preliminary findings of a pilot study using continuous Wave Doppler and comparison with classic auscultation

摘要

To the Editor: Routine fetal heart examination is performed in the obstetric office using a portable continuous Wave Doppler (CWD) device [1], which produces sounds but not images. We explored the heart in adult patients using this method and we found it to be surprisingly informative. We decided then to define cardiac auscultation points and typical auditive patterns for the procedure. After that, we compared this method with classic auscultation (CA) in cardiologic patients, using color Doppler echocardiography (CDE) as a gold standard.