medpundit |
||
|
Monday, May 17, 2004Usually, babies with Tetralogy of Fallot are much sicker than this baby was. He was very healthy appearing; pink, not blue as the text-books say he should have been, and eating and crying vigorously. I wish I could go back and listen again and commit the murmur to memory, but he's gone on to a different hospital now. Learning to recognize heart murmurs is one of the most difficult tasks for a medical student (and beyond.) They're few and far between these days, so you don't get to go around listening to all of them several times a day during clinical rotations. Instead, we have to rely on textbook descriptions or audio recordings. And even then, the less common ones are soon forgot. So, we learn to characterize them instead. We learn to distinguish when they start and when they end, and what kind of sound they make (harsh, blowing, mechanical.) Then the intrepid physician can match those characteristics with what he knows or can look up about a particular murmur. Not a very effecient or easy way to learn. But, things are much better in the internet age. Where there are libraries of heart sounds. (And lung sounds, too.) (And here's a nifty illustration of ventricular septal defect, which is what I originally suspected the child had.) posted by Sydney on 5/17/2004 08:11:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
|