Your Hearing History

We don’t want to be too nosey about your ears but in order to understand how best to help you we ask questions about problems you've had regarding comprehension, hearing, balance, ringing in the ears and ear disorders, pertinent medical history, and noise exposure.

Otoscopy

Otoscope literally means ear‑viewer. It is the familiar instrument you see doctors using to view the ear drum and check for excessive wax and other problems. An exciting new tool is the video otoscope, a device that enables you to view on a TV screen the insides of your own ear canals and eardrums. Click here to see images of otoscopy.

Tympanometry

This test procedure involves presenting a tone and mild air pressure to each ear canal. Instantly, the instrument readout tells us how efficient your eardrums are and whether there is suspicion of wax blockage or other obstruction. Hearing loss attributable to these and related causes can most often be corrected by medical treatment. Click here to see a tympanogram being obtained.  

Test Environment

Ideally, hearing testing is carried out in a sound‑treated room with the audiologist seated outside, observing your responses through a soundproof window. Less accurate but still very useful is the hearing test that utilizes a portable audiometer in a non‑sound‑treated environment. Click here to see sound treated test booth in use. 

Pure Tone Testing

The “pure tones” used in hearing testing serve to sample the ear’s sensitivity to a wide range of pitches. The faintest loudness which you can hear at any one pure tone pitch is called your “threshold.” We will map out all your thresholds to form a graph we call your audiogram, literally, “hearing picture.” We then compare the results of testing your sensitivity to tones presented via ear phones with those sent via a small vibrator placed on the bone behind the ear. These tests help distinguish between two  common forms of hearing impairment: one caused by some form of “mechanical” blockage (often correctable with medical treatment) and the other due to a loss of nerve function (some of your hearing nerves -- among the thousands you were born
with -- are no longer responding). Of course, we share all findings with you when testing is completed (usually in 15-30 minutes). Click here to see image of audiogram.  

Speech Audiometry

Words are presented through earphones to measure your sensitivity to softly spoken words and the clarity with which you can understand them when they’re made loud enough. Most important is your “clarity score,” the percentage of words heard correctly when presented loudly enough for you to do your best. Although audiologists prefer to speak of your “speech discrimination” score we are really talking about how clearly you hear words. If words are heard loudly but they sound distorted, your speech discrimination score would be low. If hearing aids are recommended our goal would be to program them to give you the best word clarity at comfortable levels of loudness. Click here to see earphones in use.

OAE (Otoacoustic Emission Testing)

OAE testing is ideal for infants, toddlers, older children, developmentally or physically disabled adults and anyone who cannot complete a traditional hearing test because it provides a fast, minimally invasive method of testing for cochlear (inner ear) pathology using a soft-tipped microphone probe held to the ear canal. The test is painless, and can take as little as two minutes.

Otoacoustic emissions are sounds generated within each cochlea (snail shell like organs of hearing deep in the skull) of nearly all normal‑hearing ears by active bio‑mechanical processes within the “outer hair cells” which are microscopic nerve cells activated by movements of the fluid in the cochlea, the movements corresponding to sounds of any kind. Since OAEs are present in normal ears, it can be assumed that the absence of an emission is a sign of irregular cochlear function, a possible sign of hearing loss.

Research shows that the quicker we can identify hearing impairment in children the more successful we can be in correcting or compensating for the disability. Click here to see OAE results charted on computer screen.

Evaluation Report

The audiogram and report of findings is yours for the asking and should be stored with your important medical papers. It should include recommendations to help you hear better. 

The Hearing Aid Evaluation