This site is intended for healthcare professionals

Go to /sign-in page

You can view 5 more pages without signing in

Continuous heart murmur

Last reviewed dd mmm yyyy. Last edited dd mmm yyyy

Authoring team

These occur when there is a communication in the circulation with a continuous pressure gradient throughout the cardiac cycle. Continuous murmurs are often maximal in late systole. This fact helps to discriminate a continuous murmur from an ejection murmur accompanied by an early diastolic murmur. Possible causes of a continuous murmur include:

  • aorta to pulmonary artery communication such as patent ductus arteriosus - maximal below the left clavicle

  • systemic arteriovenous communication: - congenital e.g. aortic sinus of Valsalva aneurysm rupturing into the right heart - acquired as the result of trauma e.g. knife wound

  • pulmonary arteriovenous communications

  • bronchial artery anastomosis in pulmonary atresia

  • artificial ducts (Waterson or Blalock shunt)

  • prosthetic valve

  • venous hum

Related pages

Create an account to add page annotations

Annotations allow you to add information to this page that would be handy to have on hand during a consultation. E.g. a website or number. This information will always show when you visit this page.