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Hearing Evaluation for Adult

What to expect for an adult’s hearing evaluation

Interview

• Please have your paperwork filled out with as much information as you can provide us. The audiologist will more likely than not ask you some follow up questions from your questionnaire.

Otoscopy: Looking in your ears

• The audiologist will perform a cursory inspection of your ear with a handheld otoscope or videoscope. We will be looking for excessive wax, abrasions or infections in the ear canal and the status of your tympanic membrane (ear drum)

Immittance: Middle ear function testing

• Your middle ear may also be evaluated to determine the presence of fluid or pressure behind your eardrum. This is a simple, painless procedure where air pressure is sent through a probe in your ear canal to check the mobility of the tympanic membrane.
• Acoustic reflex testing will be performed to evaluate the status of your auditory nerve. This is evaluated by presenting a loud, quick tone to your ear and recording a muscle contraction from your ear.

Audiologic Evaluation: Hearing test

• The audiologist will put foam insert earphones in each ear  We will evaluate how softly you can just barely understand normal speech
• We will then evaluate how well you understand speech when it is presented at a level that is comfortable to you
• Following speech testing, we will present soft tones to determine the smallest amount of sound you are able to hear across the primary frequencies of human hearing (250 through 8000 Hz)

Completion of Testing

• The audiologist will discuss your current hearing loss along with information on what to do next. (i.e. follow up with a physician, follow up with another appointment to discuss hearing aids/amplification options, return for annual audiologic evaluations)