Amplified Stethoscopes for Medical Practitioners

Practitioners having trouble hearing necessary body sounds can quickly achieve success by switching to an amplified stethoscope. There are quite a few amplified stethoscopes available, with the E-Scope II (Cardionics), Thinklabs One or TL-One (Thinklabs), and Littmann Model 320 (3M) most popular and the newer Core (Eko) gaining some interesting ground. Each is designed to compensate for hearing loss by amplifying body sound, although it is difficult to make comparisons among devices. There are no specification standards with amplified stethoscopes and much of the product capability information has been reduced to marketing claims of providing “up to 24, 30, 40 or 100x amplification”, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Nevertheless, these devices do offer practitioners with hearing loss, who are not regular hearing aid wearers, a straightforward solution, if their hearing loss isn’t “too severe”.

Source: 20Q: Amplified Stethoscopes for Medical Practitioners24