View clinical trials related to Heart Murmurs.
Filter by:Heart failure (HF) is a condition in which the heart cannot pump blood adequately. It is increasingly common, consumes 4% of the UK National Health Service (NHS) budget and is deadlier than most cancers. Early diagnosis and treatment of HF improves quality of life and survival. Unacceptably, 80% of patients have their HF diagnosed only when very unwell, requiring an emergency hospital admission, with worse survival and higher treatment costs to the NHS. This is largely because General Practitioners (GPs) have no easy-to-use tools to check for suspected HF, with patients having to rely on a long and rarely completed diagnostic pathway involving blood tests and hospital assessment. The investigators have previously demonstrated that an artificial intelligence-enabled stethoscope (AI-stethoscope) can detect HF in 15 seconds with 92% accuracy (regardless of age, gender or ethnicity) - even before patients develop symptoms. While the GP uses the stethoscope, it records the heart sounds and electrical activity, and uses inbuilt artificial intelligence to detect HF. The goal of this clinical trial is to determine the clinical and cost-effectiveness of providing primary care teams with the AI-stethoscope for the detection of heart failure. The main questions it aims to answer are if provision of the AI-stethoscope: 1. Increases overall detection of heart failure 2. Reduces the proportion of patients being diagnosed with heart failure following an emergency hospital admission 3. Reduces healthcare system costs 200 primary care practices across North West London and North Wales, UK, will be recruited to a cluster randomised controlled trial, meaning half of the primary care practices will be randomly assigned to have AI-stethoscopes for use in direct clinical care, and half will not. Researchers will compare clinical and cost outcomes between the groups.
The combination of fever and auscultation of a heart murmur suggests the diagnosis of endocarditis. However, fever itself increases cardiac output and could therefore modify heart sounds. The aim of the FeMur study is to measure the modification of heart sounds during fever. Heart sounds of 15 hospitalized febrile patients with a heart murmur will be recorded using an electronic stethoscope before and after resolution of fever. The records will be analyzed using a computerized application in order to quantify the intensity of heart murmurs.