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Cost-effective Evaluation of Heart Murmurs in Children
Jeffrey A. Wong, MD;
Richard A. Meyer, MD
Children's Hospital Medical Center Cincinnati, Ohio
Arch Fam Med. 1996;5(7):381.
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| Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings. |
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Many if not all children have cardiac murmurs. The vast majority of these murmurs are clinically benign and are appropriately followed up by the patient's primary care physician without noninvasive testing or consultation from a specialist. However, in those cases where the differentiation between an innocent and pathological murmur is not obvious, physician and parental concern and anxiety may be high. The question of how to best initially evaluate these cardiac murmurs that are not clearly benign, yet are not associated with definite historical or physical findings consistent with heart disease, remains.
Previous studies in this patient population have shown that noninvasive assessment of these murmurs, particularly by echocardiography and chest radiography, does not significantly improve the ability to differentiate pathological cardiac lesions from innocent murmurs when compared with clinical evaluation alone by an experienced pediatric cardiologist.1-4 Nevertheless, many cardiac murmurs in children are still initially being evaluated
. . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]
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