The Benefits of Using Doppler Auscultation

Hi. My name is Dr. Leonard Hess. I would like to spend a few moments with you talking about the benefits of using doppler auscultation.

Doppler auscultation is really simple.

The temporomandibular joint, if it is healthy and intact, should have a condyle and a disc sitting on top of it, and it should be encapsulated in a fibrous capsule, bathed in synovial fluid. Synovial fluid is the slipperiest substance in the human body.

So in the normal interaction of the joint, and if we listen to the joint using a doppler auscultation, and if everything is where it is supposed to be, we should really hear no friction or no noise coming through the doppler unit.

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Now, when the disc starts to get out of position and we start to get bone-to-bone contact, or crepitus, or we can get clicking and popping of the temporomandibular joint, doppler auscultation is a wonderful way for us to be able to go in and listen to what is going on inside that joint. Because when you have friction, whether it is off of the medial pole or the lateral pole, you really cannot fool the doppler into getting a false positive or a false negative.

So doppler auscultation is a very cost-effective and extremely diagnostic and valuable tool to incorporate into your practice.