Hearing Well

At some point in our life, we might encounter changes in our ability to hear and if this happens, it is a simple process to undergo an examination for hearing. If you are experiencing problems when it comes to your hearing, do not hesitate to consult with an audiologist as he or she will help you find out what is wrong after administering several sound tests. Taking our ears into consideration, they have a sensitivity to sound that can be measured by an audiologist with an audiometer.

Checking to see how well your ears can hear sounds in different frequencies is this test that makes use of an audiometer but aside from this there are two other types of hearing exams that you can choose from. It is the Weber test that is the second alternative. In this case, you can also use the Rinne test.

Because it is a primary tool when it comes to hearing exams, you should know about the audiometer. Here, you will be placed in a soundproof booth and then sound tests will be performed. Here, the person being evaluated will be required to wear a set of headphones that is connected to the main audiometer mechanism by the audiologist and then a series of sound tests in different frequencies will be administered and here is when the person being evaluated will be asked if he or she can hear anything and if sounds are still audible the examiner will ask the person to repeat what can be heard.

A basic hearing test is what you have here. When it comes to the Weber hearing exam, this is named after Ernst Heinrich Weber and the process involves the use of a vibrating tuning fork which is placed in different areas of the face. Equidistant to the ears, areas like the chin or the middle of the forehead come into contact with the fork being used.

Basically, you are seeing if the person can hear the sound coming from the vibration of the tuning fork in both ears and this is how the test goes. Usually, people hear a louder sound in an ear and a softer one in another. With regard to this test, it is effective in detecting unilateral hearing conditions.

The name behind the Rinne test belonged to an otologist from Germany named Heinrich Adolf Rinne. This is a more scientific test compared to the one by Weber as it compares a person?s perception of sounds. You are dealing with the transmission of sound through the air or by bone conduction through the mastoid.

Considering how it makes a sound of a higher frequency, the Weber and Rinne tests use a vibrating tuning fork. What happens here is that the tuning fork is placed on the mastoid process until the sound disappears. Expect to have the tuning fork placed outside the ear by the examiner afterwards.

Certain sounds can still be heard if a person does not have a hearing problem. A hearing problem will usually mean having nothing to hear. This is the way by which the Rinne test detects problems with hearing.

In this case, speech evaluations will normally come with hearing tests. When the audiologist conducts a hearing test, chances are the person being evaluated will be asked to repeat the sounds he or she hears when a sound test is run in different frequencies. When it comes to hearing well, it is important that you distinguish words too.

You can use the results from a test for hearing to see if you need to see a doctor or not. Sometimes, treatments done can reverse the loss of hearing. In some cases, hearing loss may become permanent.