Hearing Tests

Part 1: Interview

Is your device making a whistling noise? Does it feel like your hearing aids have been adjusted and you’re just not hearing things the way you should? Have the devices themselves gotten damaged through some mishap? Are the custom components of your devices just not fitting comfortably? Call us! We’ll schedule time with you to better understand what’s happening with your technology. In many cases, we can take care of the repairs right here in the practice. Other repairs will require us to send your devices back to the manufacturer, where their technology experts will assess your hearing aids and repair them.

Part 2: Examination

Using a specialized piece of equipment called an otoscope — a tool used to closely examine the inner workings of your ear and assess its health — we’ll study your ear canals to see if we can identify things like potential infections, obstructions caused by a buildup of earwax, or any other visible factors that might be negatively affecting your hearing. This is an essential step before we begin your hearing test, as blocked or unhealthy ears must be treated differently than those that appear healthy and unobstructed. This is part of our effort to narrow the variables of what might be wrong in order to make the best recommendations possible about your hearing health.

Part 3: Testing

In order to get the clearest understanding possible of your hearing health, we evaluate your hearing by conducting a variety of simple but informative tests. The results from these tests will tell us the specific parameters of your hearing loss — what frequencies you’re having difficulty with, and to what degree those difficulties are for you. We do this by measuring your hearing at four specific frequencies, and test each of those frequencies at 25 decibels each. We also will assess your ability to understand speech to get a clear picture of how you’re able to hear and understand conversation in different listening situations. Lastly, we’ll round out the testing process by evaluating your middle-ear. This test involves evaluating how your hearing and your eardrum respond to different levels of pressure.

Part 4: Audiogram

Once we’ve completed all aspects of the testing process, your results will be compiled into what is called an audiogram. Your audiogram is essentially the state of your hearing health, visualized, so that a hearing health professional can evaluate its data, share that data with you, and make recommendations for treatment based upon its findings. Your audiogram tells us so much, and it allows us to explain to you clearly and plainly what type of hearing loss you’re facing, its severity, and what we can do to treat your loss so that you can re-engage with the world in exactly the way you want to. We’re in no rush! If you have questions, we’re here to answer them. You deserve to be as informed as possible about every aspect of your hearing health so you can make confident, informed decisions about your treatment options.