Types of hearing evaluations
Audiological assessments help us determine what type of hearing loss you have, its cause, and whether it’s mild, moderate, or severe. An experienced team selects the right hearing tests for your needs.
Pure-tone testing is the most common type of hearing test. It evaluates how well you hear sound at different pitches. During the test, you wear earphones and listen to sounds transmitted by a machine called an audiometer. A variation of this evaluation called a bone conduction test uses a tool called a bone oscillator to send vibrations directly to your inner ear.
A speech test checks your ability to hear and repeat spoken words at different volume levels, with and without background noise. This test measures your speech reception threshold (SRT), the lowest level at which you can hear and understand speech.
Acoustic immittance audiometry is a series of tests that looks for problems in your middle ear and eardrum (membrane that separates your middle ear and outer ear). An audiologist inserts probes into your ear for the following tests:
- Tympanometry: evaluates how your eardrum responds to changes in air pressure while you listen to sounds
- Acoustic reflex testing: measures how a muscle in your middle ear contracts in response to loud sounds; this reflex protects your inner ear from damage
- Acoustic reflex decay: records how long your middle ear can maintain its reflex contraction
An OAE test measures how well your inner ear works. We put a tiny microphone in your ear to check how the hair cells respond to sounds. Hair cells are vital to hearing and balance. They convert sound waves into electrical signals and send them to the brain.
An ABR test uses electrodes to record how electrical signals travel along your auditory neural pathway from your inner ear to your brain. It’s typically for children or adults who can’t have standard hearing tests.