MP3 Players Could Replace Stethoscopes?

With new electronic gadgets being invented everyday, we often find ourselves in a world full of amazing things. You never know what is going to come next. New things are replacing the old ones and it has become a challenge to common man to keep in pace with new inventions.

The invention of MP3 player replaced old tape recorders and we thought it was very advanced. Now this thing is going to do something so different that a lay man would not have even imagined.

MP3 players /recorders detect some respiration sounds better than traditional stethoscopes and could prove handy replacement in future. With better quality sound from MP3 players/recorders, some clinical sounds can be better heard.

They could be recorded, stored on computers and file-shared, according to Neil Skjodt of Department of Medicine at the University of Alberta and his audiologist colleague Bill Hodgetts. By pressing a microphone directly to the chest, they recorded a range of respiratory sounds with different patterns. They found the quality, clarity and purity of the loud sounds were better than those heard with stethoscope.

The Mp3 files were later transferred to a computer and converted into frequency curves. Computer analysis of the stored sounds showed that each had a distinct signature. The computer - like human ear – did, however, sometimes have difficulty in processing complex or quiet breathing sounds.

Researchers decided to conduct the experiment after studies showed health care staff “generally had mediocre auditory facilities, especially when using stethoscopes”. One study showed students sometimes had to listen to certain clinical sounds up to 500 times before they could recognize them accurately.

Mr. Skjodt said that in addition to providing better quality sound, MP3s enabled doctors to reproduce or store the sounds heard during a consultation or transmit them to a databank so other doctors could refer to them.

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