Digital stethoscope in detecting innocent and pathological murmurs among children: systematic review

Despite fast developments in non-invasive diagnostic techniques, the initial cardiovascular exam still includes the auscultation of heart sounds with a stethoscope. This systematic review aimed mainly to study the developments in chest auscultation using digital stethoscopes and artificial neural network that interprets the results of electronic stethoscopes in detecting and differentiating innocent and pathological murmurs in the pediatric population. PubMed, Web of Science, Science Direct, EBSCO, Scopus, and Cochrane library were searched. Seven studies were included, with 671 patients. Out of the total population, 217 patients had innocent murmurs, and 403 had pathological murmurs. All the included studies reported that digital auscultation could differentiate pathological and innocent murmurs, which is a fast and cost-saving method. It was found that digital auscultation has a diagnostic benefit in identifying pathological and innocent murmurs. Studies also revealed that a quick and affordable strategy could be a big assistance when making decisions.