Audible Auricular Heart Sounds in Auricular Flutter

Abstract

THE bedside diagnosis of auricular flutter can occasionally be made on the basis of certain characteristics of the ventricular rate and its response to carotid-sinus pressure, deep inspiration and exercise, changing intensity of the first heart sound (especially when the ventricular response is irregular) and rapid auricular undulations in the neck veins. Less frequently but more conclusively the diagnosis can be established by the presence of audible auricular heart sounds at the precordium.Instances of auricular flutter in which auricular sounds have been heard and recorded by graphic methods are rare. In their excellent review of this subject, Hecht and . . .