Auscultation of cardiac sounds in prehospital environment?

[Maple Flag]

Hi again all,

It's been a while since I last posted here. I've been swamped with life, and the load is lifting as summer comes on. I hope to pay my dues with 1 or 2 more aid bag reviews to make up for lost time. In the mean time, I have a question. (I've posted this at Lightfighter also, but I know a lot of high speed medics drop in here on a regular basis, so this seems like a good pond to fish in).

I'm taking a physiology course at university, and we're doing a fairly in depth (for me at least) section on cardiac physiology. Part of this includes tracking and matching ECG, left ventricular volume, atrial/ventricular/aortic pressures, and so on through the cardiac cycle, as well as the corresponding cardiac sounds and landmarks for auscultaing each sound (S1-S4).

Needless to say, this was never covered in my EMR (a Canadian BLS level cert) training, and in fact, auscultation of cardiac sounds was never covered - just deep airway/lung sounds.

This raised a few Qs for me:

Are any more advanced providers (more advanced than me anyway) auscultating cardiac sounds in the prehospital environment?

Is this covered in ACLS or other prehospital applicable certifications?

If performed, what specifically are you lookking for, and what provisional diagnosis can be made in part through cardiac auscultation?

Any other related information is also of course appreciated.

Cheers.