Use of Tape-Recorded Heart Sounds in Screening of Children for Heart Disease

Abstract

An automated tape-recording unit for use in screening large populations of school children for heart disease has been developed and field tested. A technician can produce good quality apex and base heart sound recordings from 250 children during an average school day. The physician can listen to these recordings at a rate of 140 children per hour, recalling for examination each child considered to have an abnormal recording. Since almost all heart disease in children has some acoustic manifestation, a screening technic based on the heart sounds seems to be a logical one. The studies done with this unit have demonstrated its ability to select children with heart disease from a large number of normal children. Agreement between readers is satisfactory, and the number of "false positives" is considered reasonable.

Mass Miniature Radiography in Detection of Heart Disease

“…Their conclusions were that none of these methods alone was satisfactory and that the minimum basic examination still consisted of a full physical examination, chest x-ray film, and electrocardiogram. Smith et al (1959) and Miller et al (1962) used tape-recorded heart sounds for discovering heart disease. These recordings were then analysed by a team of cardiologists.…”

Mass Screening of School Children for Heart Disease: During 1 School Year in Sacramento, Calif., 3,518 Children Were Screened with the Use of a Portable Analog-Digital Computer

“…MASS SCREENING programs for the detection of heart disease in children have been conducted since 1959 (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6). Recently such programs have been facilitated by the use of the PhonoCardioScan (A), a portable analogdigital computer (6)(7)(8).…”