iPods Increase Physician Accuracy in Diagnosing Heart Problems

Diagnosing heart problems often begins when your doctor listens to your heart with a stethoscope. A heathly, normal heart has a distinct set of sounds associated with each cycle of contraction and relaxation, known as the cardiac cycle. Doctors are trained to recognize these healthy sounds as well as a large number of abnormal and potentially problematic variations.

The problem is that accuracy in identifying these abnormal sounds is pretty low. Studies have shown that, on average, doctors identify a particular sound with the specific abnormality it indicates only about 40% of the time. While this statistic is a little misleading - often doctors only need to recognize that a sound is abnormal instead of having to specifically identify a particular associated problem - higher accuracy is always a good thing.

Trials have shown that after listening to specific heart sounds repeatedly using normal iPods, the identification accuracy increased to around 80%, leading some to suggest that the devices be integrated into standard education and review.