Egophony

Welcome to our website's egophony page. Here we provide a description of egophony and related voiced breath sounds along with clinical significance. We then compare healthy vs abnormal voiced sounds using audio recordings and text. Finally, we provide links to the lung sound training lessons available on this web site.

Definition of Egophony

Voiced sounds, such as egophony, can provide important information about the presence of a lung abnormality and its location. The basic idea is that normal lungs (filled with air), do not readily transmit sounds, while consolidated lung tissue more readily transmits sounds. To use egophony during an exam, ask the patient to say 'e' as you auscultate over the chest wall. Over normal lung areas, you will here the same 'e' tones. Over consolidated tissue, the 'e' sound changes to a nasal quality 'a' (aaaaay), like a goat's bleating. The sound will often become louder over consolidated tissue. The next paragraph and recordings will make this clearer.

Egophony: Healthy vs Abnormal

Having asked the patient to say 'e' as you auscultate the lungs, you may hear two different sounds as presented below.

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Egophony - Normal

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The sound is an 'e'.

Egophony - Consolidated Lung Tissue

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Listen for 'a' (aaaay).

Lung Sounds Reference Guide

Our auscultation guide provides quick access to several types of these sounds. The guide including a few listening tips and a waveform of the audio recording.
Healthy
Consolidated

Egophony Lessons

Two lessons on egophony sounds are part of our Intermediate Lung Sounds course. There are also lessons on bronchophony and whispered pectoriloquy, which are other types of voiced sounds. We suggest taking the full course (about 20 minutes), but the egophony lesson can be used without the full course.
Intermediate Lung Sounds