Here are some highlights of what to expect visiting
Meet the Expert
A licensed hearing care professional with the qualifications and expertise to evaluate and advise you.
Measuring your Hearing
During this appointment, your hearing care professional will measure your hearing ability, interpret the results and offer suggestions and recommendations.
Evaluating your hearing abilities starts with precise measurements of how well you hear sounds and speech. Your hearing care professional needs this information to understand your needs and give you the right advice.
Fortunately, these measurements are quick and easy. For best accuracy, the tests are conducted in a sound controlled setting, usually a sound booth or a quiet room. All you have to do is listen and respond.
Pure tone testing
This reveals how well you hear tones of different pitches or frequencies. You simply listen through earphones to pure tones across the range of sounds that is most important for speech and environmental listening in everyday life. You simply confirm that you have heard each sound either by raising your hand or pressing a response button.
The volume of each sound is then adjusted until the “threshold” -- the softest level you can hear -- is reached. You may also be asked to listen to these same sounds through a small device placed behind your ear. This test can help determine whether sounds are being conducted properly to the inner ear, and helps uncover possible causes of hearing loss.
The audiogram
Your hearing care professional will carefully mark your thresholds on a table or graph called an audiogram. In the pictured graph, the frequencies or pitches are shown across the bottom from left (low or bass) to right (high or treble). The quietest sounds are shown at the top of the scale while the loudest sounds are at the bottom. The O’s represent the right ear and the X’s the left.
Speech testing
You may also be asked to repeat familiar words and phrases which become softer and softer until you can no longer hear and understand them. You will also be asked to repeat words spoken at a comfortable loudness level to measure how well you understand speech if the volume is correct for your needs.
Putting it All Together
The overall results of your consultation will reveal many things: whether you have hearing loss, which ear hears better and how well you hear low and high pitched sounds. The word tests help provide additional information on your ability to clearly understand speech if the volume is sufficient and comfortable. Your hearing care professional may perform additional tests to evaluate other aspects of your hearing function in order to obtain the most complete hearing profile for you.
These results are important in diagnosing the causes of your hearing loss and best course of action. Your hearing care professional will explain your test results to you and recommend what can be done.
