Heart Murmurs – Systolic vs Diastolic

Transcript

What we do when we hear a murmur is we classify it into systolic and diastolic. All that means is we are timing when the murmur occurs during the cardiac cycle. When it happens during systole meaning when the heart is ejecting blood, we call it a systolic heart murmur. When it’s happening during diastolic, or when the heart is resting, we call it a diastolic heart murmur. So when we are classifying murmurs, we look at several different things. The timing, the intensity, the location, and its characterization with different maneuvers during physical examination.