The time for the stethoscope is gone!
Mohaymen Abdelghany
CEO of Fakeeh University Hospital, VP of Fakeeh Care - UAE | Physician Consultant@ JCI | VP Elect @ ACHE MENA | Board Member @ Dubai Healthcare Business Group Passionate Physician & Healthcare Leader | Harvard Alumnus
The stethoscope is having a crossroads moment. Perhaps more than at any time in its two-century history, this ubiquitous tool of the medical profession is at the center of debate over how medicine should be practiced.
In recent years, the sounds it transmits from the heart, lungs, blood vessels and bowels have been digitized, amplified, filtered and recorded. Four months ago, the Food and Drug Administration approved a stethoscope that can faithfully reproduce those sounds on a cellphone app thousands of miles away or send them directly to an electronic medical record.
Algorithms already exist that can analyze the clues picked up by a stethoscope and offer a possible diagnosis.
But whether all this represents the rebirth of diagnostic possibility or the death rattle of an obsolete device is a subject of spirited discussion in cardiology. The widespread use of echocardiograms and the development of pocket-size ultrasound devices are raising questions about why doctors and others continue to sling earphones and rubber tubing around their necks.
“The stethoscope is dead,” said Jagat Narula, a cardiologist and associate dean for global health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. “The time for the stethoscope is gone.”
Not so, counters W. Reid Thompson, an associate professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “We are not at the place, and probably won’t be for a very long time,” where listening to the body’s sounds is replaced by imaging. “It is valuable,” he said.
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By Lenny Bernstein
Internist und Geriater
9 年The stethoscope is irreplacable in primary care, and it will be for quite some time, and it′s good that way. Don′t underestimate the bond it makes between doctor and patient.
Especialista en Cardiología y Medicina del Deporte/ Medicina Integrativa/ Health & Wellness Coaching
9 年I think the stethoscope can't compete with the great advances that technology offers. However in my opinion it has an irreplaceable place in the medical act. It's like saying "we don't more calculate mentally, as we have variety of devices, much faster or more graphics than the human mind as are the calculators"
Family Physician I ER physician. Telemedicine across Canada (TiaHealth I Speetar l RocketDoctors I Teladoc)). AB, ON, BC, and YT.
9 年You cannot practice medicine without it. Images are not available everywhere, neither cheap.
Chief Medical Officer at AirMidVest
9 年Stethoscope is invincible to medical professionals, however, high tech equipments may easily replace it.