How Does a Stethoscope Work?
How Does a Stethoscope Work? A stethoscope allows the doctor to hear the sounds your body makes inside. In order to do this, the doctor presses the listening piece firmly against your body. The listening piece gathers the sounds inside your body and funnels them up the long hollow tubes, through the earpieces, into the doctor’s ears.
The earpieces fit snugly into the doctor’s ears so that outside noises are excluded and only the sounds coming through the stethoscope can be heard. Doctors use stethoscopes to listen to the lungs, intestines, arteries, and veins as well as the heart. It’s not a fancy machine. The stethoscope picks up sound much as our eardrums do. The big difference is in how the sound arrives there.
Stethoscopes work like speakers for doctors: They amplify (make louder) the sounds inside your body to give them a better idea of what’s going on in there! Diagnostically, this makes the stethoscope an invaluable medical tool.