Hearing tests are an important step in diagnosing and understanding a patient’s hearing loss. At Clarity by Kalie, we’ll select a range of evaluations to determine not only if you’re experiencing hearing loss, but the severity of your condition and the factors influencing it. This will help us paint a full picture of your hearing health and allows us to make the right personalized recommendations.
How We Determine What Tests Are Needed
When deciding what series of tests to conduct, we will take a variety of information into consideration, including: your age, symptoms, family background and medical history. This information allows us to develop a feel for what could be putting you at risk for hearing loss, as well as what the future of your auditory health may look like.
Different Types of Hearing Tests
Once we’ve established an understanding of your background, there are various types of hearing tests we can use to assess auditory function, including these common ones:
- Pure tone: This involves listening for faint tones at different frequencies, typically delivered through headphones. The individual indicates when they can hear the tone, allowing your audiologist to establish an audiogram, which illustrates the person’s hearing thresholds.
- Bone conduction: This evaluation assesses inner ear function by bypassing the outer and middle ear. A small vibrating device is placed against the bone behind the ear. Vibrations are transmitted through the bone to the inner ear, bypassing any potential issues in the outer or middle ear.
- Speech: This assesses an individual’s ability to hear and understand spoken words at varying volumes. Your audiologist will play recorded speech stimuli, and the person being tested will repeat what they hear. This helps determine the individual’s speech reception threshold and word recognition abilities.
These tests can take anywhere from 30-60 minutes in length, and then you will discuss the results with our audiologist. If your testing indicates the need for a hearing aid, we will also discuss these options with you and help recommend the right course of action.
Hearing Tests and Children
Hearing is a crucial element in a child’s development, which is why it’s important to have any doubts checked out. There are different ways to do this, depending on your child’s age. For infants, there are special ways to observe how they react to sounds. For older kids, there are different games and activities that help us understand how well they hear, in addition to traditional testing. This information allows us to form a diagnosis and then recommend the next best steps to ensure your child’s development isn’t impacted by hearing loss.