Thursday, November 14, 2013

The 411 On An Audiometer Hearing Test

By Allyson Burke


If you feel like you might have trouble hearing, an audiometer hearing test might be the first thing that you will try out to find out the truth. In general, a doctor will test your hearing abilities with various devices first, including basic screenings and tuning forks. After that, he should have a pretty good understanding whether you are suffering from hearing loss. If this happens to be the case, then he should request for more thorough tests to be done.

If he suggests that you go through an audiometer screening, he may endorse you to a specialist. This specialist, also called an audiologist, will then be in charge or you. To learn more about how the process works, just keep reading.

When it comes to this special screening, your audiologist will aim to find out how far your abilities go in terms of hearing. This usually involves a slew of tests instead of a single one, wherein you will be asked questions in order to gather important information behind your condition. Your medical history will be questioned before you go through the actual audiometer test, as well.

During this test, you will be required to wear headphones over your ears in order to block out other sounds that may be coming from the outside to distract you. Various sounds will then be sent into your ears. This is basically done to check out each individual ear and to see whether you are suffering hearing loss from just one of them or from both of them.

The sounds that are sent into you ears might arrive at different frequencies or levels. This is done to find out how well you can hear them and whether you can hear them at all. To tell the doctor where you are hearing the sounds from, he may ask you to raise the hand on the side of whichever ear you can hear sounds from as the test progresses.

You should notice some sounds getting louder and getting more faint. Other times, you might not hear sounds at all, but this would be completely normal. However, you doctor will need to know just how low of a sound you can actually hear.

By going through this test, doctors can find out how bad your hearing loss actually is. They will also figure out whether you need more hearing evaluations overall. So, make sure you take this test seriously and don't just play guessing games with it to make it seem like you can hear perfectly well.

An audiometer can definitely provide a ton of helpful information, so that doctors can gauge your level of hearing. From there, a specialist can then give you the necessary treatments for your hearing loss or assign more tests to be done in order to find out more about your case and the treatment decisions that you might need in the end.




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