Hearing loss can affect people of all ages, professions, and lifestyles. Because of this, there are many different causes of hearing loss.
The best and most effective way to determine potential causes for hearing loss is to get a thorough hearing evaluation.
During a hearing evaluation, your provider can also determine the extent of the hearing loss and how it affects your quality of life.
With this information, they can then create a treatment plan specific to you and your needs.
Here at Ascent Audiology, we take great pride in our dedication to making personalized treatment plans for every one of our patients.
We take our time to get to know our patients and make sure that we are doing everything we can to improve their quality of life.
Many people are nervous about scheduling a hearing evaluation because they don’t know what to expect. So, below, I explain exactly what it’s like to have a hearing evaluation done at Ascent Audiology.
We Take Our Time To Listen To You
At Ascent Audiology, all of our providers care deeply about you and your hearing loss treatment goals.
During the first part of your evaluation, we will sit down with you to learn about who you are, what you do, and the lifestyle you enjoy.
We will take our time to make sure we address all of your concerns regarding your hearing loss. In addition, to ensure we have a complete understanding of your hearing health, we will ask you about your family history, your overall health, and any prior injuries or events that may have led to your hearing loss.
We do this to determine how to move forward with the evaluations and build a relationship with you and gain a good understanding of what your needs are.
The Physical Examination
Once we have concluded our discussion, we will move on to the main event, your ears’ physical examination. This is often the part that our patients are most nervous about, but I can assure you that the entire exam is 100% painless.
We use an audio scope (essentially a magnifying glass with a light) to look inside your ear and see if there is any damage, obstructions, inflammation, or other possible physical causes of your hearing loss.
Three Hearing Threshold Tests
There are three tests we will give you to determine the extent of your hearing loss (all of which are also 100% painless). The first is Pure-tone Audiometry. Using the audiometer, we will transmit various tones at different pitches and volumes into the earphones you are wearing.
You will respond as you hear them. This test measures the lowest volume of sound you can hear at each tested frequency.
The second is Speech Audiometry, where similarly to the pure-tone test, we will transmit recorded or live speech through the audiometer into your earphones at various volumes and tones. Again, you will repeat the words you hear, allowing us to identify your capacity to understand others when they speak to you.
The third is Speech with Background Noise. This is a variation of speech audiometry but adds background noises at various volumes and tones. This provides us with an assessment of your “real-world” hearing capacity in a variety of environments.
After this, if necessary, we will also complete Tympanometry Testing, which involves a soft plug being put in your ear to create pressure and then transmit a sound.
This test is designed to measure your eardrum’s acoustic reflexes and ensure damage to your inner ear does not contribute to your hearing loss.
Discussing You, Your Results, And Potential Treatment Plans
The final part of your hearing exam is yet another discussion, this time a cumulative one.
We will first take our time to explain your results from each part of the exam and what they mean.
We will then explain the different treatments we provide and what we think will be most helpful for you based on your results and the information we learned from you during our first discussion.
Additionally, if more testing is needed, we will let you know about that as well.
Schedule A Hearing Assessment In Arizona
If a hearing exam seems like something you need, we would love to help you out. We pride ourselves in our commitment to helping each of our patients achieve the best quality of life through hearing loss treatment and would love nothing more than to help create a treatment plan that suits you and your needs.
If you are curious about booking a hearing evaluation, please give us a call or schedule an appointment online.
We look forward to hearing from you!