Tuesday, November 19, 2013

The 411 On An Audiometer Hearing Test

By Allyson Burke


If you are starting to think that your hearing abilities aren't up to par to perfect standards, then an audiometer can help you test your levels of hearing. Generally speaking, though, doctors might use other tools to test your hearing abilities first, such as a basic screening or a tuning fork. Once they have a better understanding of what type of hearing loss you are facing, they may then request for a more in-depth evaluation of your ears.

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.

To start, the audiologist will thoroughly test your ear through various screenings. He may ask you a slew of questions to find out more about your hearing problems and might ask you questions about your medical history while he's at it. After that, a proper hearing test will then be conducted in order to figure out how much help you will actually need in the long run.

During this test, you will have to wear headphones that fit well over your ears in order to block out sounds that come from outside of the room that you are in. After that, different sounds will go into your ears one by one. The aim of this test is to check each individual ear since loss may occur in a single ear or in both at the same time.

Most of the time, these sounds will also come in at various kinds of frequencies or levels, as well. This is done to find out whether you can hear low sounds or high sounds or whether you can hear various sounds at all. To gauge your level of hearing, your specialist might ask for you to raise a finger or a hand on the side of whichever ear the sounds seem to be coming from for you.

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.

The information taken from this will tell your doctor about the kind of potential hearing loss you might have. It may also pinpoint whether you are in need of more thorough evaluations of your hearing abilities. As such, you should take your sweet time when it comes to this test and make sure that you answer everything accurately instead of guessing things.

The good news is that you can learn a lot about your hearing problems just by going through an audiometer test. Once your hearing levels have been properly gauged by it, your specialist can then give you the right treatment for your condition in no time or put you through more tests as needed.




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