When to Schedule a Hearing Evaluation
Hearing loss is often very gradual, and it can be difficult to spot the early warning signs of hearing loss. Your family may recognize your hearing loss before you do, and complain that you’ve been asking them to repeat themselves, or that you’ve been turning up the TV volume to uncomfortable levels.
Watch for These Signs of Hearing Loss:
- Struggling to follow conversations, especially in places with a lot of background noise.
- Difficulty hearing conversations on the phone.
- Repeatedly sleeping through your alarm.
- Suffering from tinnitus, a ringing or buzzing sound in your ears.
- Turning up the volume on the TV or radio.
- Avoiding social situations because it’s too difficult to hear what’s being said.
Adult Hearing Evaluations
What to Expect
At your initial hearing evaluation appointment, we will perform a comprehensive hearing evaluation to determine the cause of your hearing difficulties, and the severity of your hearing loss. To get a clearer picture of your overall health and hearing health, we’ll ask you a few questions about your health history, find out more information about any injury or illness you’ve had that could affect your hearing, and rule out serious health conditions or medications that could be causing your hearing loss.
Next, we’ll take a look at your ears. This completely non-invasive test is simply to check the structures of your ears, ensure your ears are healthy, and see if there’s a build-up of earwax that could be affecting your hearing.
Hearing Evaluation in Progress
Finally, we’ll play you a series of tones at a variety of pitches and volumes, and all you need to do is indicate whenever you’ve heard a tone. Your results of this hearing test will be printed on an audiogram, a graph that shows which sounds you’re missing, and which sounds you’re hearing clearly. We’ll take the time to clearly explain the results to you, and send a comprehensive written report to your referring physician. If we find that you do have a hearing loss and could benefit from a hearing aid, we’ll make some recommendations of treatment options you can consider.
Pediatric Hearing Evaluations
Using advanced diagnostic equipment, we are able to perform accurate, comprehensive hearing tests for children of all ages. Just like adult evaluations, we’ll ask you questions about your child’s overall health and well-being, and look in your child’s ear to check for damage to the ear. Children love listening to tones, and they’ll have a lot of fun with the hearing evaluation. We work to make the hearing evaluation a fun, positive experience for all.
