The majority of individuals aren’t proactive about their hearing health and likely haven’t had a hearing test since grade school because it’s typically not part of a routine adult physical. The good news: Hearing tests are easy, painless, and provide a wealth of insight to professional hearing specialists, both for diagnosing hearing problems and determining whether interventions like hearing aids are working.
A complete audiometry test is more involved than what you might recall from childhood, and you won’t get a lollipop or a sticker when it’s completed, but you’ll obtain a much clearer understanding of your hearing. Here are three of the most prevalent types of hearing tests and what they’ll reveal.
Pure tone testing
One component that we utilize to measure sound is the intensity or loudness which is measured in decibels (dB). Another important aspect is pitch or tone which assesses the frequency of sound. At the lower end of the pitch spectrum, a low bass sound measures between 50 and 60 Hertz (Hertz, or Hz for short, is the unit of measurement related to tone or pitch), with average speech ranging between 500 and 3,000 Hz. 20 to 20,000 Hz is the spectrum of frequencies that a healthy human ear is able to hear.
With a pure tone hearing test, your hearing specialist will have you put on a set of headphones which are hooked up to an audiometer. Another device that your hearing specialist may use is called a bone oscillator which just measures how well sound is conducted by your bones. Pure tones are delivered to one ear at a time, and you signal (by pushing a button or raising a hand) when you hear a sound.
The minimum volume that you can hear the tones will then be monitored. Whether your hearing loss is more marked on one side than the other, what frequency of sound you have the most trouble hearing, and generally how well your ears are functioning, will be gauged by this test.
Speech audiometry
This test also makes use of headphones, but instead measures your ability to hear words being spoken. In some cases, you’ll be asked to repeat recorded words that are spoken while there is background noise. Your hearing specialist will, in other circumstances, have you repeat words they are saying, but their mouths will be hidden from view.
Hearing individual words means you can’t rely on context to understand what’s being said, and being unable to see the speaker’s mouth stops you from reading lips (something you might not even realize you’ve been doing). Rhyming words, let’s say crime, time, dime, and climb, can be challenging for people suffering from high-frequency hearing loss to differentiate.
Instead of only looking at the volume or threshold required for hearing, as tone testing does, speech audiometry tracks your ability to make sense of the sounds you hear. Word recognition testing can also help in determining whether hearing aids could help.
Immittance audiometry
Alright, these can be a little uncomfortable, but shouldn’t cause pain. Tympanometry artificially changes the pressure inside of your ear by pushing air in with a small inserted probe. A graph readout will allow your hearing specialist to identify if there’s an issue with your eardrum such as earwax impaction or a perforation, and how well your eardrum is working.
Your ears have reflexes that are checked by a similar probe. When you hear a loud sound, muscles in your middle ear automatically contract. Knowing the noise level required for this reflex can help a hearing specialist determine the extent of hearing loss. Individuals with profound hearing loss don’t exhibit any reflex.
It’s important to include immittance testing because it helps diagnose conductive hearing loss, which is when issues occur in the small bones inside of the ears and can occur at the same time as age-related or noise-induced hearing loss.
Are you having trouble hearing? Get it tested! If you have hearing loss or tinnitus, we can help inform you on how to preserve healthy hearing, and what your potential treatment options may be.