Heart2Heart is shutting down after seven years.

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eli5: heart sounds

Split s1/2, murmurs, s3, s4, what do you they all mean? What's the heart doing to cause all of them?

T145

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Re: eli5: heart sounds

for the splits, you know how the heart typically has four valves? Two big ones and two small ones, to put it simply. From what I remember, a split occurs when the two smaller, or the two larger valves don't close at the exact same moment, so you get a slight delay between closures, thus creating a split.

S3 can be a few things, but from what I also remember, it's either the heart hitting the chest wall, or something to do with ventricular filling (You hear it when ventricles hit capacity?).
By that logic, S4 might have something to do with atrial filling. lol

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Re: eli5: heart sounds

A murmur is a turbulent blood flow sound. Basically blood flowing against the grain of the normal blood flow. It can be innocent (aka functional) or something to keep an eye on.

T145

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Re: eli5: heart sounds

A murmur is a turbulent blood flow sound. Basically blood flowing against the grain of the normal blood flow. It can be innocent (aka functional) or something to keep an eye on.

Whoops. Forgot that. lol

But yeah, a murmur is basically caused by turbulence of some sort. Either from abnormal blood flow, or just from a lot of blood flowing through a narrow vessel. (You can hear a similar thing when pushing a lot of fluid/water through a narrow tube)

Innocent murmurs are basically where the cause of the murmur isn't anything that might pose a risk to health. For instance, some hearts might have a large enough stroke volume that they may produce an innocent murmur from just the sheer volume of blood moving through the aorta. It's not anything serious, but just an interesting side effect.

Something a bit more serious would be like mitral stenosis, where the mitral valve calcifies (basically, grows calcium crystals on it and stops working properly [it basically seizes up]), and the valve creates turbulence that you can hear through a stethoscope. In extreme cases, you can also feel the murmur (well, the turbulence, to some degree), not just hear it. (but that's the extreme).

orang_utan_dean

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Re: eli5: heart sounds

No-one's heart valves close at exactly the same time due to the difference in size between the left and right chambers...but typically the difference is too small for the human ear to pick up.  An audible split first or second heart sound is usually no concern in young or particularly athletic people, but a very wide split or one heard in older people can be a sign of an overly enlarged heart.

I'll go out on a limb and venture that there seems to be no definite answer on what causes an s3, according to what I've read anyway.  Again, it's quite normal in the young and athletic.

An s4 is an abnormal sound though and needs investigating if heard.  It's caused by a forceful contraction of the atrium into a ventricle that cannot expand further, mostly due to HCM or aortic/pulmonic stenosis/hypertension (depending on whether it's the left or right side).  Not to be confused with a split first heart sound though!

T145

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Re: eli5: heart sounds

No-one's heart valves close at exactly the same time due to the difference in size between the left and right chambers...but typically the difference is too small for the human ear to pick up.  An audible split first or second heart sound is usually no concern in young or particularly athletic people, but a very wide split or one heard in older people can be a sign of an overly enlarged heart.

I'll go out on a limb and venture that there seems to be no definite answer on what causes an s3, according to what I've read anyway.  Again, it's quite normal in the young and athletic.

An s4 is an abnormal sound though and needs investigating if heard.  It's caused by a forceful contraction of the atrium into a ventricle that cannot expand further, mostly due to HCM or aortic/pulmonic stenosis/hypertension (depending on whether it's the left or right side).  Not to be confused with a split first heart sound though!

Any idea what actually causes the S4?