[dbbolton]

Medical student here- I completely agree. Auscultation is an important component of physical examination, and most of this article's arguments against it just seem silly. Ignoring the obvious etymological fallacy, it's just not cost effective to replace stethoscopes with imaging tools.

A "cheap" portable ultrasound machine is going to be in the thousands of dollars, and there's just no way that hospitals and clinics would be able to purchase enough of them so that one was available for every ongoing PE- not to mention the fact that US is billed separately, and could easily double the patient's cost for a brief office visit.

Plain film x-rays and CT scans expose the patient to ionizing radiation, so that's not a practical option either.

MRI is expensive, time-consuming, and a lot of rural hospitals might not have a machine, or if they do, it's very, very unlikely that they're going to have staff available to operate it 24 hours a day.

All of these tools, including the stethoscope, have their own separate uses and applications- they are not competitors.

[douche]

MRIs also have issues if you happen to have ferrous metals in your body. Ignoring obvious things like surgical pins, plates and screws used in orthopedics, and piercings, people in certain occupations have a high likelihood of picking up things like metal filings in their eyes, which can be catastrophic for them in a MRI.

[rrss1122]

It's simply that old non sequitur: it's 2016 and you shouldn't do X anymore. That's really their main argument. Stop using a 200 year old technology, even if it still works fine.