When I was younger I was told I have a heart murmur. Does that matter?

Heart murmurs can be due to numerous things. They can be due to a problem with the heart valves, they may be due to a hole in the heart. Some children when they are born are identified with a heart murmur that is usually due to a hole in the heart. In many situations, if that hole is small, it will close by itself and the murmur would have disappeared by the age of one or two years old. So, many people that have been told they have got a murmur when they were young should be investigated again with an auscultation. By that I mean using the stethoscope – so, someone like me would listen to the heart very carefully, if I couldn’t hear the murmur and the ECG was normal, I would drop the whole thing. It was probably a small hole in the heart that has corrected itself. If I could still hear the murmur or the ECG was abnormal, I would want an echocardiogram, that is a cardiac ultrasound of the heart, which is very good at picking up problems with the heart valves and picking up holes in the heart.