Background: Pulmonary artery hypertension (PAH) is difficult to recognize clinically. Digital stethoscopes offer an opportunity to re-evaluate the diagnosis of PAH. We hypothesized that spectral analysis of heart sound frequencies using recordings from a digital stethoscope would differ between children with and without PAH. Methods: We recorded heart sounds using a digital stethoscope from 27 subjects (12 males) with a median age of 7 years (3 months to 19 years) undergoing simultaneous cardiac catheterization.
13 subjects had a mean pulmonary artery pressure (mPAp) b 25 mm Hg (8–24 mm Hg). 14 subjects had a mPAp ≥ 25 mm Hg (25–97 mm Hg). We applied the fast Fourier transform, power spectral analysis, separability testing, and linear discriminant analysis with leave-one-out cross-validation to the heart sounds recorded from the cardiac apex and 2nd left intercostal space (LICS) to…
