How does a doctor’s stethoscope work

doctors stethoscope work
The sound has been used for identifying health condition for a long time. It is one of the most important ways to know your body condition. It uses variations of sound that your heart or other body parts make to let a doctor know body condition. When the doctor’s keep it into your heart valve, it sounds differently depending on your heart performance.

René Laennec, a French physician, invented the very first stethoscope. It was in the 19th century when the physician tried to make a connection between body sound and condition. The tool helps to make a good approach to learn about patient’s body condition.

The very first stethoscope was a hollow tube that Laennec invented. However, it gave a basic idea of hearing the sound of human body. Later, David Littman invented another stethoscope with a complex design for better sound. The stethoscope helps for taking sound from heart to pregnancy period. Moreover, it can detect sound for blood pressure, breathing and other sounds in the venous and digestive process.

But, how does a stethoscope work? Let’s discuss it in detail.

How does a stethoscope work?

Before you want to know how a stethoscope works, you need to know the basic parts. It combines all the parts to convert your body condition into sound.

Chest Piece: The part contacts with the patient’s body to capture sound. You will get two sides in the part. A flat metal disc is called diaphragm. On the other side, you will notice a bell-shape item. Both of the items is important for picking up the sound. The diaphragm helps to pick up high-pitch sounds and the bell helps to pick up the low sounds from critical areas.

Tubing: It is basically a medium to travel the sound from patient’s body to listener’s ear. Depending on the model, the length of tube can vary.

Headset: In order to make the ear tips comfortable, the manufacturer uses rubber or other soft material. Also, it helps to reduce outside noise so that a doctor can easily hear the sound.

In order to hear the sound, the doctor puts the stethoscope diaphragm on a patient’s body. The diaphragms metal disc help to pick the sound from the patient’s body. Basically, it will take the vibration from the human body and passes through the tube.

Like sound passes thorough reflection, vibration waves will also reflect into the tube and reach to the ear tips of the stethoscope. It will not take much time to cover the length of the tube.

High-pitch sounds will create higher frequencies in the stethoscope. The waves will be caused due to the artery’s opening and closing function. The frequency will depend on how frequently artery opens and closes. As a result, the doctor or nurse can easily understand the heartbeat to know your health condition.

However, the stethoscope’s bell does not work like the diaphragm. It picks only low vibration and converts low-pitch sounds. It will pick vibration from skin movement. The skin vibrates the bell and it creates waves of sound. It will travel into a narrow tube reaching to the listener. Therefore, it is easy to distinguish the sound of diaphragm and bell for the listener.


Overall, stethoscope works in a simple way. The doctors or nurses need to know the reasons for sound variation. Then, it will help to identify the problems in your body. It will create sound in different frequency for health complications.

However, it is important to use the latest stethoscopes available on the market. The latest stethoscopes will surely use advanced design so that it can create the sound more accurately to understand heart condition.

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