What happens in a hearing test?
Any new experience can be daunting so we thought it would be helpful and reassuring to briefly explain the basics of what happens when you go for a hearing test.
Your clinician will ask you for a brief history regarding your hearing, as this may provide insights into any detected hearing loss. For example, is there a history of deafness in your family? Have you had any operations on your ears? Significantly, have you exposed your ears to excessive noise?
Clues to your present circumstances might be hidden within the answers to these questions.
An examination of your ear canals using an otoscope comes next. We are looking for any abnormalities in the ear canal and ear drum, or a build-up of wax which is much more common.
The examination is followed by the insertion of a soft plug into the canal to determine the pressure in your middle ear. This tells us if your eardrum is working correctly and whether your middle ear is clear from fluids.
Furthermore, we perform the audiogram which involves placing a set of headphones on and testing each ear separately. We are looking to establish the threshold of your hearing at a number of different pitches. Your job is to indicate when you hear a tone being presented. The threshold is the point at which you can just hear a sound. With this information we can plot your hearing onto a graph, called an audiogram.
The next test is to establish the well-being of your brain in processing the sounds of speech. We test each ear separately and at different volumes. Words are played to you through headphones and you are asked to repeat what you have heard after each word. If you’re not sure – just guess! This is quite familiar to people with a significant hearing loss. The point of the exercise is to see if an increase in volume improves your comprehension of the sounds of speech and gives us a basic picture of whether hearing aids may be of assistance to you.
Otoacoustic Emission (OAE)
This test provides a unique way to examine the function of the cochlea. Otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) are sounds given off by the inner ear when the cochlea is stimulated by a sound. When sound stimulates the cochlea, the outer hair cells vibrate. The vibration produces a nearly inaudible sound that echoes back in to the middle ear. The sound can be measured with a small probe inserted into the ear canal. People with normal hearing produce emissions. Those with hearing loss greater than 25-30 decibels (dB) do not produce these very soft sounds. This test comes in handy to screen hearing of infants, neonates and people with development disabilities.
None of these tests are painful but they do give us a fuller picture of what is going on.