JP3161479U - Stethoscope - Google Patents

Abstract

A stethoscope that can effectively collect heart sounds with extremely low volume and can be heard with more natural sounds. A stethoscope is formed of a wooden body having a bottomed cylindrical shape that is flat in the height direction and defining a sound collection area on the inside, and is connected from the outside of the side wall 9 to the sound collection area 6 through the wall. A chest piece 2 having a tube insertion hole 8, a connection tube inserted into and connected to the connection tube insertion hole 8 of the chest piece 2, a conduit connected to the connection tube for guiding auscultatory sounds, and a connection to the conduit An ear canal. [Selection] Figure 2

Description

  The present invention relates to a medical stethoscope.

  The stethoscope has a chest piece (stethoscope head) for collecting sound from a sound source, a conduit for transmitting the sound collected by the chest piece, and an ear at the tip that guides the sound from the conduit to the left and right ears of the listener. The ear canal is provided with a tip.

  Traditionally, most of the stethoscope chestpieces used in the medical field are made of metal. For example, Patent Documents 1 to 3 disclose a stethoscope using a metal chest piece.

  Conventionally, the chest piece of a stethoscope is generally a metal stethoscope having a membrane surface type and a bell type (dome type). The membrane surface chestpiece is used for auscultation of high-frequency heart sounds and heart noises. However, since the low-frequency heart sounds and heart noises are deleted by the membrane surface, low-frequency heart sounds (heart tips) are generated. Not suitable for listening to heart sounds and murmurs. On the other hand, bell-shaped chestpieces have been used mainly for listening to low-frequency heart sounds and heart noises. As a result of design improvements over the past half century regarding the appearance of the stethoscope, the shape and properties of the chestpiece, sound collection tube and earpiece, the chestpiece currently used in clinical settings has already been completed. Has been considered to have been.

JP 2000-237 A Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-523963 JP 2007-61284 A JP-A-9-28702

  However, in conventional auscultation with chestpieces, heart sounds, heart noises and breathing sounds are low in volume, and patients with very low volume sounds such as patients with high body volume and subcutaneous fat cannot be accurately auscultated. There was a problem.

  Therefore, for example, as disclosed in Patent Document 4 (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 9-28702) and the like, an “electronic stethoscope” that listens to electronically increasing the volume of these sounds has appeared and is used in clinical settings. However, in the electronic stethoscope, heart sounds and heart noise are exaggerated, and it has been pointed out that heart sounds and heart noises with increased volume and respiratory sounds are different from the original sounds.

  The technical problem to be solved by the present invention is to provide a stethoscope that can solve the above-mentioned problems and can effectively collect heart sounds with a very low volume and can be heard with a more natural sound.

  In order to solve the above problems, the present invention provides a stethoscope having the following configuration.

According to the first aspect of the present invention, the connection is made of a wooden body having a bottomed cylindrical shape that is flat in the height direction and demarcating the sound collection area on the inside, and penetrates the sound collection area from outside the side wall through the inside of the wall. A chestpiece with a tube insertion hole;
A connection pipe inserted into and connected to the connection pipe insertion hole of the chest piece;
A conduit connected to the connecting pipe for guiding auscultatory sounds;
A stethoscope comprising: an ear canal connected to the conduit;

  According to the second aspect of the present invention, the connecting pipe insertion hole is provided in a straight portion extending linearly in the upper wall, and a method at a penetrating position of the inner wall provided at the end of the straight portion and defining the sound collection region. A stethoscope according to a first aspect is provided, comprising a bent portion that is inclined with respect to a line and extends in a curved shape.

  According to the third aspect of the present invention, the sound collection region defined by the inner wall of the wooden body is configured in a dome shape configured such that the central portion is deeper and gradually becomes shallower toward the outside. The stethoscope according to the first or second aspect is provided.

  According to the present invention, the chest piece that presses against the patient's skin and hears heart sounds and noises is made of wood, so that the patient does not feel cold and the inner surface has a dome-shaped depth and sound collection hole. By changing the shape, the auscultatory sound that can be actually heard can be increased. In addition, it is possible to listen to human heart sounds / heart noises and breathing sounds as original sounds, and to improve the accuracy of diagnosis.

  Moreover, since the chest piece having the above-described structure does not have a membrane surface, a natural auscultatory sound can be heard without modulation of heart sounds / heart noises and respiratory sounds.

  According to the present invention, the chest piece is formed in a dome shape so that the central portion becomes deeper as it goes deeper toward the outside, so that auscultation can be performed without changing the sound quality over a wide sound range from low to high frequencies. Is possible.

1 is an overall schematic diagram of a stethoscope according to an embodiment of the present invention. It is a schematic perspective view which shows the structure of the chest piece used for the stethoscope of FIG. It is a figure which shows the cross-sectional shape of the chest piece of FIG. It is a graph which shows the acoustic characteristic of the stethoscope and Littman type stethoscope concerning embodiment of this invention.

  Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

  FIG. 1 is an overall schematic diagram of a stethoscope according to an embodiment of the present invention. In FIG. 1, a stethoscope 1 includes a chestpiece 2 for collecting sound from a sound source, a conduit 3 connected to the chestpiece 2 for transmitting the collected sound, and the sound transmitted from the connecting tube 2 on the left and right sides of the listener. The ear canal 4 is led to the ear.

  The chestpiece 2 is made by cutting hard wood having a relatively high density, and quince, ebony, rosewood, straw, rosewood, etc. are preferably used. FIG. 2 is a perspective view showing the configuration of the chest piece according to the first embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a cross-sectional shape of the chest piece of FIG.

  As shown in FIG. 2, the chest piece 2 of the present invention is obtained by cutting a flat wood in the height direction into a bottomed cylindrical shape, and forming a sound collection region 6 by providing a recess in the central portion. In the example of FIG. 2, the chest piece is configured in a substantially heart shape, but is not particularly limited to this shape, and may be a shape such as a cylinder or a square tube. In this embodiment, the outer dimension of the chestpiece is about 4.5 cm, which is about the same size (about 4.0 to 5.0 cm) as compared to a widely used stethoscope. .

  It is preferable that the peripheral edge 5 of the chest piece 2 has a certain thickness and is chamfered so as not to give the patient an uncomfortable feeling when contacting the affected area of the patient. Moreover, in order not to let the sound in the sound collection area 6 escape to the outside, it is preferable that the sound is in close contact with the affected part over the entire circumference. A film surface is not provided around the periphery 5 of the chestpiece 2, which is a bell-type stethoscope. By not providing a membrane surface, a natural auscultatory sound can be heard without modulation of heart sounds / heart noises and respiratory sounds.

  The sound collection region 6 is configured so that the central portion becomes deeper and gradually becomes shallower toward the outside.

  As shown in the cross-sectional view of FIG. 3, the wall surface of the sound collection region 6 is preferably configured in a dome shape that extends in a circular arc shape from the periphery and the bottom wall becomes flat. By adopting such a shape, the auscultatory sound reverberates inside the sound collection region 6 and a larger auscultatory sound can be obtained. In addition, the surface of the wall surface may be configured to be smooth in consideration of the echo of the auscultatory sound, or may have some unevenness, and can have an arbitrary shape.

  A connecting pipe insertion hole 8 is provided in the bottom wall 7 of the chest piece. The connecting tube insertion hole 8 opens from the outside of the side wall 9 to the bottom surface 7 of the sound collection region 6 through the wall. The connecting tube insertion hole 8 includes a straight portion 10 that passes through the wall and a bent portion 11 that opens to the bottom surface 7. The bent portion 11 forms an obtuse angle with respect to the extending direction of the straight portion 10 and opens so as to be inclined with respect to the normal line at the penetrating position of the bottom wall 7 of the sound collection region 6. Due to the shape of the connecting pipe insertion hole 8, the auscultatory sound reflected in the sound collection region can be sent into the connecting pipe insertion hole 8 more efficiently.

  A connecting pipe 12 is inserted into the straight portion 10 of the connecting pipe insertion hole 8. The connecting pipe 12 is made of an aluminum pipe, and a circular pipe having an outer diameter of 5φ is used in this embodiment in accordance with the inner diameter of the conduit 3 so that the connecting tube 12 can be firmly attached to the conduit 3.

  The connecting pipe 10 is connected to the conduit 3. The auscultatory sound collected by the chest piece 2 is transmitted from the connection tube 2 and guided to the left and right ears of the listener through the ear tube 4.

  As the conduit 3 and the ear canal 4, those widely used for general stethoscopes can be used as they are.

  The stethoscope according to the present embodiment is made of a chest piece that is pressed against the patient's skin and listens to heart sounds and heart noises, so that it does not give the patient a cold touch when pressed against the affected area. The patient can be given the unique warmth of wood. By making the chestpiece into a heart shape, it is possible to stabilize the patient mentally and prevent changes in heart sounds due to tension, which is particularly effective during auscultation of children.

  The acoustic characteristics of the auscultatory sound were measured using the stethoscope according to the embodiment of the present invention and the bell type and membrane surface type stethoscopes that have been widely used. The stethoscope used for the experiment is a stethoscope provided with a chest piece shown in FIG. 2 as an example, a bell-type stethoscope (manufactured by Kenz Medico Co., Ltd., model 6-114) is a comparative example 1, a Littman stethoscope (Littman) Cardiology III type, M8B25841) (membrane side) manufactured by the company was used as Comparative Example 2.

(Acoustic characteristics experiment)
The experimental condition was that the chestpieces of the example and the comparative example were applied to a sound source capable of changing the frequency, and the auscultatory sound heard through the ear canal was acoustically analyzed through a measuring device, ARTS (Acoustic Response Test System) (manufactured by Kenz Medical Corporation). . The measured frequency was 20 Hz to 2000 Hz.

  The measurement results are shown in FIG. FIG. 4 is a graph in which the horizontal axis represents frequency and the vertical axis represents sound specific units. An ideal stethoscope is said to have little change in acoustic characteristics at each frequency, but in an actual stethoscope, the acoustic characteristics change as shown in the graph according to the frequency.

  As shown in FIG. 4, it can be seen that the stethoscope of the present invention has substantially the same acoustic characteristics as a membrane surface Littman stethoscope conventionally used in the low frequency region. That is, in the low frequency region of 100 Hz or less, it has characteristics that do not change much. On the other hand, when the frequency exceeds 200 Hz, a difference occurs in acoustic characteristics. In particular, in the high frequency range of 200 to 800 Hz, it was found that the acoustic specific unit is larger than that of two conventional stethoscopes, and the acoustic characteristics are excellent.

(Sensory test)
In order to compare the performance of the conventional bell-type and membrane-type stethoscopes and the stethoscope according to the present invention, the heart sounds generated by a cardiac auscultation simulator (manufactured by Miyano Medical Co., Ltd.) are auscultated at the pulmonary artery site. A total of 12 doctors (5 cardiologists, 7 general physicians) performed a sensory test on hearing.

  The membrane surface side and bell side of the stethoscope according to the present example and the conventional Litman stethoscope (Cardiology III type, M8B25841 manufactured by Littman) are alternately changed, and the following five items (high sound, We compared the performance in terms of bass, volume, sound quality and feel.

  As a result, all of the stethoscopes of the examples using wooden chestpieces evaluated that the sound quality was extremely clear because there was no vibration sound generated by the conventional membrane surface type stethoscope.

  As described above, according to the stethoscope of the present invention, the acoustic characteristics can be excellent in a wide frequency band, and the effect of not giving a cold touch to the affected area of the patient by the wooden chestpiece. Have

  The stethoscope of the present invention can be widely used as a medical stethoscope.

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Stethoscope 2 Chest piece 3 Conduit 4 Eustachian tube 5 Perimeter 6 Sound collection area 7 Bottom wall 8 Connection pipe insertion hole 9 Side wall 10 Straight part 11 Bending part 12 Connection pipe

Claims (3)

A chest piece comprising a wooden body that forms a bottomed cylindrical shape that is flat in the height direction and defines a sound collection area on the inside, and a connection pipe insertion hole that passes through the wall from the outside of the side wall and penetrates the sound collection area;
A connection pipe inserted into and connected to the connection pipe insertion hole of the chest piece;
A conduit connected to the connecting pipe for guiding auscultatory sounds;
An eustachian tube connected to the conduit;
A stethoscope characterized by comprising:   The connecting pipe insertion hole is provided with a straight portion extending linearly in the upper wall, and at the end of the straight portion, and is provided with an inclination with respect to the normal line at the penetration position of the inner wall that defines the sound collection region. The stethoscope according to claim 1, further comprising a bent portion extending in a shape. The sound collection region defined by the inner wall of the wooden body is configured in a dome shape configured such that the central portion becomes deeper and gradually becomes shallower toward the outside. Stethoscope.

Images