RESUMO
A comparison was made between the echo- and phonocardiographic examinations and the final clinical diagnosis of 85 patients with various cardiac pathology. Echo- and phonocardiography were found to be not alternative, and the less -- contradictory, but mutually supplementing methods. Echocardiography has certain advantages over phonocardiography in the diagnosis of mitral valve defects -- in evaluating the degree of its stenosis and in characterizing the morphological changes of the valve, but it is somewhat inferior in diagnosing mitral insufficiency. In the diagnosis of aortic valve defects phonocardiography appears to be more informative since echocardiography does not always permit to record the state of the aortic valve. Indisputable advantages of echocardiography in the diagnosis of the tricuspid valve defects were revealed. The comparison of the data of echocardiography and phonocardiography permitted to decypher the syndrome of "a late systolic click with a late systolic murmur" that was previously interpreted as a pericardium sound. Besides, the echocardiographic data on the changes in the left ventricular outflow tract help to explain the origin of the spindle-form systolic murmur. So far their interpretation was rather complicated, although they are often seen on phonocardiograms of normal individuals and patients with heart diseases.
