Understanding Lung Sounds

A practical and easy-to-use book with separately available CD package, Understanding Lung Sounds, Third Edition, guides you through the sounds and skills of lung auscultation. The 60-minute audio CD presents actual lung sounds—teaching you, step-by-step, how to interpret, differentiate, and identify both normal and abnormal lung sounds. Succinct and thorough, this companion book expands on the content in the CD with visual reinforcement to help you better understand what you hear.

This book offers up-to-date information on the recording and analysis of respiratory sounds that will assist in clinical routine. The opening sections deliver basic knowledge on aspects such as the physics of sound and sound transmission in the body, a clear understanding of which is key to good clinical practice. Current techniques of breath sound analysis are described, and the diagnostic impact of advances in the processing of lung sound signals is carefully explained. With the aid of audio files that are available online, detailed guidance is then provided on differentiation of normal and abnormal breath sounds and identification of the various sounds, including crackles, wheezes, other lung sounds, cough sounds, and sounds of extrathoracic origin. The book is of high educational value and represents an excellent learning tool at pre- and postgraduate levels. It will also appeal to researchers as it provides comprehensive summaries of knowledge in particular research fields. The editors bring high-level expertise to the subject, including membership of the European Respiratory Society Task Force on the standardization of categories and nomenclature for breath sounds.

Accompanying compact disc includes examples of various heart and lung sounds in healthy and diseased states.

Reviews normal and abnormal heart and lung sounds to enable students to use a stethoscope intelligently.

Breath sounds have long been important indicators of respiratory health and disease. Acoustical monitoring of respiratory sounds has been used by researchers for various diagnostic purposes. A few decades ago, physicians relied on their hearing to detect any symptomatic signs in respiratory sounds of their patients. However, with the aid of computer technology and digital signal processing techniques in recent years, breath sound analysis has drawn much attention because of its diagnostic capabilities. Computerized respiratory sound analysis can now quantify changes in lung sounds; make permanent records of the measurements made and produce graphical representations that help with the diagnosis and treatment of patients suffering from lung diseases. Digital signal processing techniques have been widely used to derive characteristics features of the lung sounds for both diagnostic and assessment of treatment purposes. Although the analytical techniques of signal processing are largely independent of the application, interpretation of their results on biological data, i.e. respiratory sounds, requires substantial understanding of the involved physiological system. This lecture series begins with an overview of the anatomy and physiology related to human respiratory system, and proceeds to advanced research in respiratory sound analysis and modeling, and their application as diagnostic aids. Although some of the used signal processing techniques have been explained briefly, the intention of this book is not to describe the analytical methods of signal processing but the application of them and how the results can be interpreted. The book is written for engineers with university level knowledge of mathematics and digital signal processing.