Despite all technical advances in recent years, auscultation provides both useful physiological information and close patient–physician interaction.
Even today, the stethoscope represents a symbol for physicians of all specialties. In 1819 the French physician René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laennec (1781–1826) published his milestone book De l’Auscultation Médiate ou Traité du Diagnostic des Maladies des Poumons et du Coeur introducing the stethoscope as a diagnostic tool for the bedside assessment of respiration. Assessing the pulmonary function by physical examination is as old as the field of respiratory medicine.
