The 3M™ Littmann® Electronic Stethoscope Model 3200 is a next-generation product for the company, featuring Bluetooth technology that wirelessly transfers heart, lung and other body sounds to software for further analysis.
“For almost 50 years, the Littmann brand has been synonymous with quality and innovation in stethoscopes,” said Warren Wasescha, new products marketing manager, 3M Health Care. “The introduction of the Littmann Electronic Stethoscope Model 3200 signals a new age in stethoscope technology that will help enhance clinicians’ natural abilities, and enable healthcare providers to confirm diagnoses and more easily gather a second opinion from colleagues.”
Littmann commissioned Connecticut-based Zargis Medical to develop two companion software packages exclusively for the Littmann Electronic Stethoscope Model 3200. The Zargis® Cardioscan™ software detects murmers in four main cardiac sites. Zargis StethAssist™ software, included with the Littmann Electronic Stethoscope Model 3200, allows doctors to visualize heart, lung and other body sounds, play recordings at slow speeds to hear more clearly, save those recordings for later analysis, or send the recordings to colleagues for second opinions.
“The combination of the Littmann Electronic Stethoscope Model 3200 and the Zargis Cardioscan diagnostic support software arms clinicians with a valuable tool that provides results during the patient exam,” said Joseph Tartaglia, MD, a practicing cardiologist in White Plains, New York, and clinical assistant professor of medicine at New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York. “The ability to record and automatically analyze heart sounds can help improve a clinician’s confidence, document complex auscultations, and may keep some patients from going through additional, unnecessary testing.”
According to a retrospective study published in Clinical Cardiology in 2008, physicians using Cardioscan results reduced their false negative referral decisions for heart murmurs by an average of 46 percent and reduced their unnecessary referral decisions by an average of 41 percent. This is big in the age of rising health insurance premiums and unneccessary testing.
“At a time when our nation is focused on leveraging technology to improve healthcare efficiency, this launch represents a breakthrough in computer-aided auscultation that has the potential to reduce unnecessary referrals, or help clinicians detect pathologic heart murmurs earlier in the treatment cycle,” stated John Kallassy, CEO of Zargis Medical.
The Littmann Electronic Stethoscope Model 3200 is part of a line of electronic stethoscopes that also includes the recently introduced 3M™ Littmann® Electronic Stethoscope Model 3100. Although the model 3200 is the only stethoscope that utilizes Bluetooth, both stethoscopes feature 24x sound amplification and proprietary Ambient Noise Reduction (ANR) Technology, which reduces, on average, 85 percent of ambient noise that can interfere with the auscultation experience. ($765, www.Littmann.com or 1-800-413-1795)
