If
you suspect you have a hearing loss, it is important to immediately seek
the advice of a qualified hearing healthcare professional. Hearing tests are
simple, painless and widely available. Your hearing health professional will
begin by conducting a thorough history, and they will ask questions about the
challenges you are having, your lifestyle and your communication needs. There
are different types of hearing tests that evaluate specific parts of the
auditory system and specialized hearing tests just for infants and toddlers.
However, most hearing tests involve a sound-treated room or booth and
headphones. Your hearing care professional will also conduct a visual exam of
your ear canals and eardrum using a lighted instrument called an otoscope. This
will determine if something physical, such as earwax, is contributing to
your hearing loss. Once in the booth, you will be asked to listen to a
variety of tones and indicate the softest tones you can hear by pressing a
button. This part of the exam is called pure tone audiometry, and it is
valuable for determining not only how much hearing loss you have, but which
frequencies are most affected. You may also be asked to listen for and repeat
words. These speech tests can determine the softest speech sounds you can hear
and how well you can understand speech clearly when it is loud enough for you
to hear it.
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