barncatinahumansuit
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- Jun 18, 2019
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Do we have any doctors/nurses/veterinarians/etc on here? The question has been asked before but not in a few years so I'm looking for up to date product advice.
I discovered today that no, it's not because I bought a cheap one, I actually can't hear anything with a stethoscope. I'm a horseman not a medical professional so what I really need it for is gut sounds* not heart, which means that the ones I'm finding that look like they work by blinking a light with the heartbeat are not helpful. And everything I'm seeing is so expensive!
What do you use? Do you swear by it? Does it suck? If I'm getting people saying "it's gotta be [company]'s [model], that's the only one I'd trust for your purposes" then I will find the money for it because the situations where I need it can be literally life or death for the horses. Extra amplification would be a possibility for me as well as visual displays as I do have a good deal of residual hearing. (I'm surprised that I don't have enough to get by with a regular stethoscope, but I had someone else place it over a horse's heart, confirm that they could hear clearly, and hold it in place while passing me the earpieces to see if I could hear it and... nope. Nothing. So here I am.)
*For those about to ask questions, if a horse doesn't have gut sounds in all quadrants they're in trouble. That's something we check for when we're assessing a suspected colic (which is one of the leading causes of death in horses) and reporting in to the vet so that they can decide how big an emergency it is.
I discovered today that no, it's not because I bought a cheap one, I actually can't hear anything with a stethoscope. I'm a horseman not a medical professional so what I really need it for is gut sounds* not heart, which means that the ones I'm finding that look like they work by blinking a light with the heartbeat are not helpful. And everything I'm seeing is so expensive!
What do you use? Do you swear by it? Does it suck? If I'm getting people saying "it's gotta be [company]'s [model], that's the only one I'd trust for your purposes" then I will find the money for it because the situations where I need it can be literally life or death for the horses. Extra amplification would be a possibility for me as well as visual displays as I do have a good deal of residual hearing. (I'm surprised that I don't have enough to get by with a regular stethoscope, but I had someone else place it over a horse's heart, confirm that they could hear clearly, and hold it in place while passing me the earpieces to see if I could hear it and... nope. Nothing. So here I am.)
*For those about to ask questions, if a horse doesn't have gut sounds in all quadrants they're in trouble. That's something we check for when we're assessing a suspected colic (which is one of the leading causes of death in horses) and reporting in to the vet so that they can decide how big an emergency it is.
