OBJECTIVE: to discuss clinical and laboratorial evaluation of heart murmurs in children, an important problem faced by pediatricians in their practice. SOURCES OF DATA: this review was based on a critical analysis of the current literature, as well as pediatrics and pediatric cardiology textbooks, which were found to be an important source of information on the subject. SUMMARY OS THE FINDINGS: it is important for pediatricians to know how to obtain precise information regarding the patient's medical history and to perform extensive physical examination of a child with heart murmur. The diagnosis of innocent heart murmur is essentially clinical and it can help the pediatrician to identify situations which are associated with cardiovascular diseases. CONCLUSIONS: in our series, short-term video-EEG monitoring established a reliable diagnosis in most patients due to correlation between clinical and EEG data. This procedure was well tolerated by children, including infants and those with psychiatric disorders.
heart defects; congenital; heart auscultation; heart murmurs
