Most people aren’t proactive about the health of their hearing and likely haven’t had a hearing test since grade school because it’s generally not part of a routine adult physical. The good news: Hearing tests are simple, painless, and supply a wealth of information to professional hearing specialists, both for identifying hearing problems and determining whether interventions like hearing aids are working.
A complete audiometry test is more involved than what you probably remember from childhood, and you won’t get a lollipop or a sticker when it’s done, but you’ll obtain a much more detailed understanding of your hearing. There are three common types of hearing tests, each of which will provide different perspectives about your hearing.
Pure tone testing
One factor that we use to measure sound is the intensity or loudness which is measured in decibels (dB). Tone, what we colloquially think of as pitch, is another key component. At the lower end of the pitch spectrum, a low bass sound measures between 50 and 60 Hertz (Hertz, or Hz for short, is the unit of measurement associated with tone or pitch), with normal speech ranging between 500 and 3,000 Hz. Healthy human hearing ranges from 20 to 20,000 Hz.
With a pure tone hearing test, your hearing specialist will have you put on a set of headphones which are connected to an audiometer. You may also wear a device called a bone oscillator which seems alarming but just measures how well your bones conduct sound. Much like that familiar hearing test from your youth, you push a button or raise your hand when a tone plays either in your left ear or your right ear.
We’ll track the minimum volume required for you to hear each sound. Whether your hearing loss is more pronounced on one side than the other, what frequency of sound you have the most trouble hearing, and generally how well your ears are functioning, will be measured by this test.
Speech audiometry
This test also makes use of headphones, but instead tracks your ability to hear speech. In some cases, you’ll be asked to repeat recorded words that are spoken along with background noise. Your hearing specialist will, in other circumstances, have you repeat words they are saying, but their mouths will be hidden from view.
Hearing individual words means you can’t depend on context to understand what’s being said, and being unable to see the speaker’s mouth stops you from reading lips (something you might not even realize you’ve been doing). For individuals who have hearing loss in the higher frequencies, words that rhyme, like climb, time, dime, and crime, are hard to distinguish.
Speech audiometry tracks your ability to make sense of what you’re hearing as opposed to tone testing which calculates how loud particular sounds have to be in order to be heard. Whether hearing aids will be helpful is another thing that word recognition testing can help identify.
Immittance audiometry
Alright, these can be a bit uncomfortable, but shouldn’t cause pain. In tympanometry, a small probe is inserted in your ear, and air flows through it to artificially alter your ear’s pressure. A graph readout will allow your hearing specialist to identify if there’s a problem with your eardrum such as earwax impaction or a perforation, and how well your eardrum is functioning.
A related test uses a similar probe as an auditory tap on the knee, yes, your ears have reflexes! Muscles in your ear automatically contract when you are exposed to loud noise. Knowing the noise level required for this reflex can help a hearing specialist gauge the extent of hearing loss. There’s no reflex response in people who have profound hearing loss.
Though immittance tests are most useful in diagnosing conductive hearing loss, issues with the eardrum and/or small bones inside the ear, because these can occur at the same time as age- or noise-related hearing loss, it’s essential to include to know everything that’s going on with your ears.
Are you having trouble hearing? Get it tested! If you have hearing loss or tinnitus, we can help educate you on how to preserve healthy hearing, and what your possible treatment options might be.