[Spectral analysis of a "sea gull cry" murmur (author's transl)]

"Precordial honk" is a loud, high pitched, musical and usually intermittent systolic noise. The concept of extracardiac origin and "inocence" of this finding is superseded and today its valvular origin during mitral prolapse, mitral or tricuspidal insufficiency - due to rheumatic or ischaemic disease - or during cardiomiopathy is demonstrated. The acoustic characterization of this finding was based on phonocardiographic registration. All the authors describe the "precordial honk" as a high frequency murmur without specifying the acoustic characteristics of the phenomenon. A spectral analysis technique applied to the acoustic cardiac signal (Fourier analysis) has been employed in order to study the "precordial honk" of a 15-year-old boy with mitral valve prolapse. This made possible to show that this sound had only one fundamental frequency at 300 Hz. without harmonics; a "sea gull cry" murmur (as the cry of many birds is) justifying the name given by clinicians. The spectral analysis of phonocardiography signal allow to study, more precisely, the cardiac acoustic phenomenon.