What to Expect During a Hearing Evaluation

Hearing health history: We will begin by asking you about your hearing difficulties and other hearing-related symptoms.  To save time, you may download and fill out the history form ahead of time and bring it with you to your appointment.

Otoscopic inspection: Next, we will use an otoscope to inspect your ears. This will show us if ear wax has accumulated in your ear canals or if there are signs of pathology that might require a referral to a physician.

Immittance: With a small soft-tip probe placed in your ear canal, we take measures which provide information about the movement of your eardrum. For example, this test will help us identify whether you have pressure or congestion behind the eardrum. Another part of this procedure tests the reflexes of a tiny muscle in your ear that contracts when you hear loud sounds.  The way this muscle is working has diagnostic value. You will feel some pressure in your ears and hear some moderately loud sounds. The majority of people report they do not feel any discomfort during this test.

Otoacoustic emissions: When you hear a sound, it activates the tiny cells in the inner part of the ear, called the outer hair cells.  When these cells are activated, they actually make a noise themselves. When we put a small microphone in the ear canal, we can measure the sound your outer hair cells are making. This is valuable diagnostically in determining how healthy those cells are. This test is routinely done with children and frequently with adults, particularly at the initial evaluation. 

Pure-tone audiometry: During the next part of the hearing test you will go into a soundproof room and listen to a series of tones through headphones. You will be asked to press a button or raise your hand every time you hear the sounds. With this information, an audiogram is obtained. Information on the audiogram indicates the degree of hearing loss (mild, moderate, severe, etc.).  It is also very common for people to hear some tones more easily than others which is also demonstrated on the audiogram.

Speech testing: This is also an important part of the hearing evaluation.  Some people have more difficulty understanding speech than others regardless of how loud the speech signal is.  We will ask you to repeat a series of words from a standardized recorded speech test. Depending on your hearing loss, we may also perform measures of your speech understanding in noise as well as your sensitivity to loud sounds.

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