The Murmur Only a Trained Ear Can Catch

In her first week of clinical rotations at Johns Hopkins, medical student Priya Anand pressed a stethoscope to a patient's chest and heard nothing unusual. Just the steady lub-dub she had memorized from textbooks. Her attending physician, Dr. Carroll, listened next and immediately identified a faint mitral valve murmur — a whisper hidden inside the heartbeat that Priya had completely missed.…