Auscultation Health Dictionary

The procedure of listening to sounds within the body by using a stethoscope.

Some organs make sounds during normal functioning, such as the movement of fluid through the stomach and intestine, the opening and closing of heart valves (see heart sounds), and the flow of air through the lungs.

Abnormal sounds may indicate disease.

The method used by physicians to determine, by listening, the condition of certain internal organs. The ancient physicians appear to have practised a kind of auscultation, by which they were able to detect the presence of air or ?uids in the cavities of the chest and abdomen.

In 1819 the French physician, Laennec, introduced the method of auscultation by means of the STETHOSCOPE. Initially a wooden cylinder, the stethoscope has evolved into a binaural instrument consisting of a small expanded chest-piece and two ?exible tubes, the ends of which ?t into the ears of the observer. Various modi?cations of the binaural stethoscope have been introduced.

Conditions affecting the lungs can often be recognised by means of auscultation and the stethoscope. The same is true for the heart, in which disease can, by auscultation, often be identi?ed with striking accuracy. But auscultation is also helpful in the investigation of aneurysms (see ANEURYSM) and certain diseases of the OESOPHAGUS and STOMACH. The stethoscope is also a valuable aid in the detection of some forms of uterine tumours, especially in the diagnosis of pregnancy.

n. the process of listening, usually with the aid of a *stethoscope, to sounds produced by movement of gas or liquid within the body. Auscultation is an aid to diagnosis of abnormalities of the heart, lungs, intestines, and other organs according to the characteristic changes in sound pattern caused by different disease processes. —auscultatory adj.