Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-5-2018

Identifier

PMCID: PMC6368429 DOI: 10.7759/cureus.3689

Abstract

Heart murmur is the most common reason for a referral to a pediatric cardiologist. Virtually all children have a heart murmur during their childhood. Less than 1% of murmurs are pathological in children. Innocent/functional heart murmur is the most common type of heart murmur. There are multiple theories proposed to identify etiology of innocent heart murmur with varying consensus, but everybody agrees that innocent heart murmur does not carry any morbidity or mortality risk. Even today, heart murmur is associated with high physician uncertainty and parental anxiety. Extensive cardiac evaluation for such a benign finding is also associated with high health care utilization and cost. This article attempts to review this long-known finding which continues to remain a diagnostic challenge.

Journal Title

Cureus

Volume

10

Issue

12

First Page

3689

Last Page

3689

MeSH Keywords

Heart Murmurs; Infant; Child; Child, Preschool; Adolescent

Keywords

flow murmur; functional heart murmur; heart murmur; innocent heart murmur; murmur; pediatric murmur

Comments

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY 3.0., which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publisher's Link: https://www.cureus.com/articles/16419-innocent-heart-murmur

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