Why bother? He’s listening to your “heart sounds”. These are the noises made by the valves in the heart as they snap shut.

Will I live? In the normal heart you should hear the familiar heart beat, known as the “lub” and “dup” sounds made by the synchronised closure of valves that are functioning correctly. If there’s a narrowed or leaky valve, the flow of blood will be audible, too, as a “murmur”. The site and nature of the murmur gives your doctor clues about its precise origin and type, all of which will need confirmation by an echocardiogram, a type of cardiac ultrasound.

Bullshit factor? High. Listening to your heart provides information about the state of your valves, but virtually nothing else. And these valves are only rarely implicated in most heart problems. For example, heart attacks and angina are caused by blocked and narrowed coronary arteries respectively, neither of which provides any clues through the stethoscope. But any patient with a real or perceived cardiac problem will feel understandably short- changed without the ritual application of the stethoscope, even though most