BOOK REVIEW FROM JOURNAL OF VETERINARY INTERNAL MEDICINE 2003;17:943

Cardiac Auscultation and Phonocardiography in Dogs, Horses and Cats
Kvart C, Häggström J. Uppsala: TK i Uppsala AB; 2002. 120 pp. 1 Audio CD. ISBN 91-631-2837-3.

Cardiac auscultation is one of the oldest, most important, and widely used diagnostic techniques in veterinary cardiology. However, reference material on auscultation for teaching of students and training of practitioners is rare. With this book, the two well known Swedish cardiologists Clarence Kvart and Jens Häggström closed the gap between the only verbal description of cardiac sound events and the audiovisual presentation of auscultatory findings.

This comprehensive book comprises an introductory chapter on definition, classifica-tion, origin, and timing of cardiac sounds, heart murmurs, and valve clicks. In addition, there is a short introduction on the stethoscope and the technique of recording phonocardiograms.
The second and third chapters occupy heart sounds and murmurs in dogs and cats as well as in horses. Using a systematic approach, the etiology, character, point of maximum inten-sity, and clinical significance of the different heart sound phenomena, associated conditions, and differential diagnoses are discussed. The influence of rhythm disturbances as well as the effect of cardiac and extracardiac disease on heart sounds and murmurs are described too.

The book contains more than 100 high-quality colored phonocardiographic illustra-tions and an enclosed audio CD with over 60 examples of representative heart sound re-cordings. This makes the book a very useful and easily applicable source of basic as well as advanced knowledge on cardiac auscultation. Nevertheless, as heart sounds and murmurs are closely related to the timing of hemodynamic events during the cardiac cycle it would have been desirable to have a simultaneous electrocardiogram on each phonocardiographic figure for orientation.
The book is priced reasonably for the target audience and will certainly be frequently used to aid the veterinary student and the practicing veterinarian in the interpretation of nor-mal and abnormal heart sounds auscultated through the stethoscope or recorded on a phonocardiogram. It may serve as a quick reference for the generalist as well as the special-ist in cardiology that may help during diagnostic work-up of patients with auscultatory abnor-malities. This excellent book belongs to the library of every veterinarian with an interest in clinical cardiology.

PD Dr med vet habil Karsten Schober, DECVIM-CA (Cardiology)
Department of Small Animal Medicine
University of Leipzig
Germany