Does Facemask Impact Diagnostic During Pulmonary Auscultation?

Area of Science:

• Pulmonary Medicine
• Medical Acoustics
• Diagnostic Imaging

Background:

• Facemasks are crucial for preventing airborne transmission, especially during pandemics like COVID-19.
• Chronic respiratory disease (CRD) patients particularly benefit from facemask use.
• However, facemasks increase breathing resistance, potentially affecting respiratory examinations like pulmonary auscultation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of facemasks on the diagnostic accuracy of clinical pulmonary auscultation.
• This research is the first to assess how facemasks influence lung sound analysis.

Main Methods:

• Lung sounds from 29 patients were recorded using an electronic stethoscope, both with and without a surgical mask.
• Breath cycles were identified using an autocorrelation algorithm.
• Time-frequency analysis was employed to extract and compare spectral features.

Main Results:

• Analysis of 87 breath cycles with masks and 82 without revealed no significant differences in extracted frequency content, evolution, or power.
• Key features like peak frequency, median frequency, band power, and spectral integration remained comparable.
• This suggests a minor impact on the diagnostic outcomes of pulmonary auscultation.

Conclusions:

• Current findings indicate that facemasks have a limited effect on the primary diagnostic features of pulmonary auscultation.
• Further research is needed to evaluate the impact on adventitious sounds and confirm the absence of discernible diagnostic outcomes in clinical practice.