The interest of listening the body is from immemorial times. We could say that the medicine gets some techniques from other simpler technologies, such as the coopers or specialists in preserving wines. It was usual to measure the level of the barrels, oak coopers rattled at times using his hand on which percussed with a hammer or a finger of your other hand. Hence the principle of percussion on the body that aims to differentiate sounds coming from empty or filled cavities.
The stethoscope is a later creation, that they began using sound amplification technology through the use of bells. The stethoscope is the famous birthing Pinard, created by the eminent obstetrician the same name, which consists of a wooden bell clearly inspired musical, ie in the wind instruments.
Instead, the stethoscope as we know it today was created by René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laennec in 1816, and is mainly used to listen to the sounds produced inside the body. Some examples are:
- At Heart: murmurs, blood pressure measurements
- A standard abdominal peristaltic sounds, for which you frequently have to leave the stethoscope in one position for minutes of silence, until the advent of sound.
- Murmurs can be found at the level of the arteries and abdominal aorta or arteriovenous fistulas.
- In the lungs: the emergence of rhonchi, wheezing, crepitancias, fine crackles, and so on.
Currently, stathoscopes are not only used by doctors, and that they can also objectify different types of noise and are often used in health care workers, health promoters, technicians, nurses and even home use for self-management vital parameters like blood pressure.
Tags: stethoscopes