It’s common for people to think that a hearing test simply involves putting on a pair of headphones and raising a hand when you hear a tone. After all, most people have gone through this testing at some point during elementary school.
However, a hearing test with an audiologist is usually a bit more involved. That’s because these experts have several tools that can help them get to the bottom of the cause of a hearing problem and determine its severity.
Common types of hearing loss include:
Kevin Sharim and the experts at Sharp Hearing Care Professionals perform hearing evaluations, audiology consultations, and hearing tests at locations in Oxnard, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, and Tarzana, California. If you notice changes in your hearing, here are three helpful tests our audiologists could recommend.
The first test an audiologist often administers is typically a pure tone audiometry exam. During this test, you wear headphones while an audiometry machine produces a range of whistles and beeps.
Each time you hear the sound, you indicate it in some way, like pressing a button or raising your hand. Your audiologist can control the volume of the tones while administering this test, so some sounds are soft and some are loud.
Our experts use this test to look for the type of hearing loss a person may have and its extent.
Unlike a pure tone audiometry test that uses a machine, this hearing test uses a tuning fork or a similar specialty device. To administer this assessment, your specialist taps the fork, which creates vibration and sound, and then places it behind your ear or on your head. Because these vibrations travel through bone directly into the inner ear, they bypass the outer and middle ear.
An audiologist uses this specific hearing test to distinguish between nerve problems or a substance — like fluid or wax — keeping sound from reaching your inner ear.
Audiologists also use speech tests to evaluate how clearly you hear and understand language. It’s also fairly straightforward. During this exam, an audiologist plays simple words at different volumes, and you repeat the ones you hear.
While this test may not seem very extensive, it’s quite useful, especially for detecting age-related hearing loss. That’s because these types of audiology changes typically cause people to lose higher-frequency sounds first. When this occurs, certain sounds end up sounding very similar — for example, “f,” “p,” and “t.”
This is only the tip of the iceberg for hearing tests. There are also assessments that check signs of damage to delicate hairs in the cochlea, along with eardrum and bone function in the middle ear.
It’s also common for audiologists to use completely different hearing tests for babies and children, such as:
If you notice changes in your or your child’s hearing, just schedule a consultation with Sharp Hearing Care Professionals, and we can take it from there.
Based on your symptoms and concerns, we can offer personalized guidance on which hearing tests can get to the source of the problem. And, the sooner that happens, the quicker you can find solutions.
To learn more about audiology consultations and hearing tests, contact the Sharp Hearing Care Professionals location nearest you by phone or online today.
