The stethoscope, my trusty companion. I think we tend to take a simple medical instrument for granted, but it has numerous applications aside from it’s basic function: it lets you hear your insides. With a stethoscope we can diagnose multiple heart and lung problems in addition to monitoring the circulation in arteries and veins and listening for defects in your intestines. We can combine it with other instruments like the blood pressure cuff to help calculate your BP which can also reveal a vast array of diagnostic criteria. You could say it’s the “go to” instrument for physicians. Here’s the one I use:
Whenever they listen to your heart, they’re not just randomly placing it on your chest and listening. There are specific points to place the stethoscope for auscultation. Each point corresponds to a chamber of the heart and any potential places for problems. These places are located in relation to your sternal angle. “My sternal whaaa?”
Feel where your collar bones meet in the middle, there’s a little dip. This is the beginning of your sternum. Just below that you’ll feel a little hump, and it seems like the bone changes angles. That’s your sternal angle, and we can use that to orient ourselves to find landmarks in your thorax.
In relation to that angle, that’s how they determine to place the stethoscope to listen to your ticker.
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