"Heart Sounds and Murmurs Across the Lifespan" defines the concepts needed to learn or review cardiac auscultation. The combination of audio (available on either CD or audio cassette) and text explains how to identify and interpret normal and common abnormal heart sounds. Some heart sounds are reproduced on a heart sound simulator, allowing for a clear, crisp grasp of specific, individual sounds. Others are recorded from real patients to distinguish between similar heart and lung sounds, and to help the listener select the heart sounds from the auditory milieu.This book: covers the distinct heart sounds (S1 through S4) first, then graduates the listener to more complex sounds and murmurs; builds upon the individual heart sounds by including end-of-chapter reinforcement in more than 170 self-learning, 'unknown' heart sounds exercises and questions with answers; and, also groups extraneous sounds around which normal heart sounds they are likely to be heard, i.e., 'sounds around S1'. This approach allows practitioners to build confidence in their ability to discern and identify sounds by being able to place them within the cardiac cycle.