What to Expect at a Hearing Test
If you have noticed a change in your hearing abilities, the first move is to take a hearing test. There's nothing to fear when you first see an audiologist; a hearing test is quick, painless and can give you the information you need to take charge of your hearing health.
When a baseline hearing test is performed, hearing can be controlled efficiently, preventive measures can be enforced, and care can be recommended sooner rather than later if hearing starts to change. This ensures more significant progress with treatment.
Here's a guide to what to expect with a hearing test with us.
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1. A Consultation
To start, we’ll ask you about your lifestyle, habits, jobs, and current listening experiences during your consultation with us. To determine whether there is any inherited hearing loss, we will inquire about your personal and family medical background.
If you have been treated for an infection or medical condition recently, we will inquire about the drugs that you have been prescribed. All of this will be useful during our diagnosis stage. We will also explore how well you feel that you connect to others in specific sound environments.
2. Ear Examination
3. Hearing Tests
To determine your current hearing capacity, we conduct a series of hearing tests. The tests look at the role of your eardrum, outer hair cell function, and acoustic reflexes. You will be asked to sit in our soundproof space during the hearing test, with a set of headphones on.
The pure tone test looks at how well you hear a sound. At various frequencies and volumes, we will play a series of sounds, and if you hear one, you will be asked to press a button.
We'll then run a test for speech recognition. A sequence of phrases will be played, and you will be asked to repeat the words or phrases.
We will perform a tympanometry test in such cases. It can help diagnose disorders, which can lead to hearing loss, particularly in children—the test measures how your tympanic membrane responds to sounds.
Reviewing Your Results
An audiogram, a visual representation of your hearing capabilities by ear, documents your hearing test results. The speech recognition component of your test will be registered as a percentage.
We can assess the configuration and degree of hearing loss, if it is present, from these findings. If you have hearing loss, using the information shown on the graphs, we can explain why communication and speech comprehension is difficult.
Your audiogram shows the vertical axis depicting loudness and the horizontal axis representing frequency. Here is a guide to the various levels of hearing loss it can display.
- Normal hearing (0 to 25 dB)
- Mild hearing loss (26 to 40 dB)
- Moderate hearing loss (41 to 70 dB)
- Severe hearing loss (71 to 90 dB)
- Profound hearing loss (greater than 91 dB)
