As Clifton Meador’s observes in “Unheard Hearts,” these days most doctors rarely listen to a patient’s heart.

 “Physicians do carry stethoscopes and it certainly is a badge that shows they are a physician, but the sad thing is a large percentage of them don’t know how to use it and use it improperly when they do,” says Michael Criley, professor emeritus of medicine and radiological sciences and the University of California, Los Angeles’ David Geffen School of Medicine.

In a recent interview with Cardiovascular Business, Criley explains: “When two-dimensional echocardiography became available in the mid-1970s it could have, and should have, provided a noninvasive way of seeing what the heart chambers and valves were doing when extra sounds or murmurs were created, but instead replaced bedside auscultation [listening to the heart].

Reading what Criley had to say, and thinking about Meador’s piece, it struck me that this is all part of what some call “the depersonalization of medicine.”

By and large, 21st century doctors do not lay hands on their patients. As psychiatry resident Christine Montross pointed out in a New York Times op-ed: a few years ago:  “Today’s doctors rarely do thorough physical exams.” Instead, they rely on “diagnostic tests and imaging studies.”

Meanwhile, in medical schools, Montross  reveals, “virtual gross anatomy” lets students avoid the “messy” business of dissecting a real body. “This is a mistake,” says Montross.

                                    Listening to the Heart                        

Criley’s theory that the stethoscope has become little more than a badge of honor is based on a study of physicians’ cardiac examinations.. . Criley was the lead author on a study that investigated these exams, published in the the December 2010 issue of Clinical Cardiology. Continue reading →