Littman Cardiology III Good for Babies?

Specialties PICU

Published

So I currently work on a mother baby unit where I assess both moms and babies. I have the Littman Classic II Infant stethoscope which is absolutely fabulous for listening to my infants, but the diaphragm is just too small for listening to moms' lung sounds or even getting a good blood pressure reading on an adult. I'm considering the Littman Cardiology III but was wondering if it's easy to convert back and forth from peds to adult use. Does anyone out there have one that uses it for both?

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Specializes in Cardiology and ER Nursing.

Yeah it's incredibly easy to switch between the two. You just flip it over.

http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/Littmann-Gallery/stethoscope/cardiology/III/

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Specializes in ER, progressive care.

I have a Cardiology III. when you first get that stethoscope, it has an adult side and a pediatric side. you can convert the pediatric side to an adult bell but I just leave it as is and use more pressure if I want to listen to lower-pitched sounds.

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It comes set up to use as dual diaphragm. Just spin the head. You can take the smaller off and make a bell out of it, but no one does that.

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My cardio III works great for humans of all sizes. Would definitely recommend !

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Specializes in CEN, SCRN.

Ditto to all. I'm a paramedic and constantly switch the bell depending on who I am caring for.

The cool thing about the cardiology 3 is that both the "diaphragm" side and the "bell" side are identical in function, just different in size.

The larger size is tuned differently depending on how much pressure you exert onto the patient's skin when listening. The smaller sized side works exactly the same way.

It was difficult when I started nursing school because when I tried to explain this to my elderly instructors, they didn't want to listen to what the "EMTs" in the back of the class had to say. We tried to explain why our scopes didn't have a bell. They told us we had to buy new stethoscopes for class if ours didn't have a bell....... :uhoh3:

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If you're looking for an alternative, the MDF ER scope is a REALLY quality dual head scope that works well on tots and adults alike.

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