• Anesthesia and analgesia · Sep 2013

    Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study

    Brief report: pulmonary auscultation in the operating room: a prospective randomized blinded trial comparing electronic and conventional stethoscopes.

    • Clement Hoffmann, Elisabeth Falzone, Catherine Verret, Pierre Pasquier, Thomas Leclerc, Nicolas Donat, Daniel Jost, Stephane Mérat, Guillaume de Saint Maurice, Bernard Lenoir, Yves Auroy, and Jean-Pierre Tourtier.
    • Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Percy Military Teaching Hospital, HIA Percy, 101 Ave., Henri Barbusse, BP 406-92141 Clamart Cedex, France. clement.hoffmann@yahoo.f.
    • Anesth. Analg.. 2013 Sep 1;117(3):646-8.

    BackgroundWe compared the subjective quality of pulmonary auscultation between 2 acoustic stethoscopes (Holtex Ideal® and Littmann Cardiology III®) and an electronic stethoscope (Littmann 3200®) in the operating room.MethodsA prospective double-blind randomized study with an evaluation during mechanical ventilation was performed in 100 patients. After each examination, the listeners using a numeric scale (0-10) rated the quality of auscultation. Auscultation quality was compared in patients among stethoscopes with a multilevel mixed-effects linear regression with random intercept (operator effect), adjusted on significant factors in univariate analysis. A significant difference was defined as P < 0.05.ResultsOne hundred comparative evaluations of pulmonary auscultation were performed. The quality of auscultation was rated 8.2 ± 1.6 for the electronic stethoscope, 7.4 ± 1.8 for the Littmann Cardiology III, and 4.6 ± 1.8 for the Holtex Ideal. Compared with Holtex Ideal, auscultation quality was significantly higher with other stethoscopes (P < 0.0001). Compared with Littmann Cardiology III, auscultation quality was significantly higher with Littmann 3200 electronic stethoscope (β = 0.9 [95% confidence interval, 0.5-1.3]).ConclusionsAn electronic stethoscope can provide a better quality of pulmonary auscultation than acoustic stethoscopes in the operating room, yet with a magnitude of improvement marginally higher than that provided with a high performance acoustic stethoscope. Whether this can translate into a clinically relevant benefit requires further studies.

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