How am I listening to breath sounds (and hearts) during the Covid-19 pandemic?

How am I listening to lungs in our Covid-19 isolation area? Thanks for asking!

I could use a disposable stethoscope, but there aren’t enough of them to go around. So what now?

Well, I was fortunate enough to find an answer when I went to Level 1 Scrubs in Fort Worth and was introduced to the Eko Duo. It’s a combination digital stethoscope and single lead EKG reader, it bluetooths to my iPhone through their app and it doesn’t need the traditional stethoscope earpiece. The free app allows recording sounds or ekg single leads should you be interested.

As you can see there’s a detachable traditional stethoscope earpiece but the trick part is the Bluetooth to the iPhone, and this is what I’ve been doing. I use this very good digital stethoscope connected to my iPhone, and I put one earbud in before I get all PPEd up (and I call my scribe who is on mute, they can hear the interaction pretty well through the earbud) and then I have a way to listen that’s very easy to use and clean.

It has several modes like diaphragm and bell, which are easy to switch between. It comes with an inductive charger and several different tips for the earpiece. Battery life for me has been excellent, lasting more than a weeks worth of shifts between charges in my use.

I haven’t tried the EKG lead thing as I don’t need to. The audio quality is good, it does seem to be sensitive to how I hold it, if I have my hand covering the back it doesn’t seem to send a quality audio signal, so I figured that out.

So if you have a decent chunk of money (MSRP is in the $350 range), like gadgets and would like an easy to use and clean stethoscope option, here’s an answer!