Posts tagged ‘mitral stenosis’

January 21, 2010

Heart murmurs mnemonic — systolic vs. diastolic

The contributor of this medical mnemonic is Kate. Thank you!

I always find myself getting confused on which murmurs or systolic vs. diastolic, but knew that once I got them in the right phase of the cycle I’d be able to differentiate them.

With that in mind and my weird logic… and knowing that there’s one Aortic and Mitral and one regurg and stenosis in each half… May I introduce:

Ms. Dee Sas

MS (mitral stenosis) = Diastolic (and thus aortic regurg as well).
SAS = systolic aortic stenosis (and thus mitral regurg).

From there, you just have to remember a few key words… continuous, click, crescendo-descrendo, etc.

Using this helped me SIGNIFICANTLY not only on my cardiovasc pathophys unit, but also on step 1 and on the wards.