Audiological Evaluations

Audiological evaluation

An audiological evaluation is basically a test of your hearing. An audiologist will preform a set of procedures to be able to figure out what is going on inside your ear and how well your ear is preforming. Typically, we use these tests to figure out what type of hearing loss, degree, and configuration you have. We use these results to be able to help our patients and find treatments that will help them hear and communicate better. You will be tested in a quiet sound booth. You have probably had your hearing tested at school before!

Terms to know:

Decibels: which is how we test volume or how loud

Frequency, or Hertz: which is how we test how often a sound is let out and pitch.

Octave: group of frequencies that help us determine how we distinguish frequencies

Sound-Pressure Level: this is the pressure level of any given sound.

Hearing Level: This is the sound pressure level produced at a certain frequency.

A Puretone: has only one frequency of vibration, and is normally talked about with threshold

Threshold: lowest sound pressure level to which a person reliably responds at least 50% of the time.

Puretone Audiometry: finding the lowest sound pressure level (SPL) at different frequency pure tones a person is barely able to hear.

Puretone Average (PTA) : average hearing threshold at specific frequencies, normally 500, 1000, 2000 Hz

Audiometric Zero: Normal value threshold for human hearing

Kramer, S. J., Jerger, J., & Mueller, H. G. (2008)

Two types of hearing tests

Types:

Air Conduction: tests the whole ear through passing sound through air

Bone Conduction: tests the inner ear through sound vibration in the bone.

The Audiometer

This is a machine that produces all sorts of sounds to test your hearing, like speech and pure tones. The audiologist can also control the frequency and intensity on this.

When getting a hearing test, you have to have some sort of means for hearing the sounds, these are called transducers!

air conduction Transducers

Supra-Aural Headphones:

Used in air conduction and is placed over the ear.

Range:

250-8000 Hz

Circum-Aural:

Used in air conduction and can transmit high frequencies for specialized hearing problems like tinnitus. Still placed over the ear.

Range:

9,000-20,000 Hz

Inserts:

Used in air conduction, but placed directly into the ear canal.

Range:

250-8000 Hz

Speakers:

Used in air conduction for those who do not like headphones or objects around or in their ear. Not ear specific.

Range:

500- 4000 Hz

Kramer, S. J., Jerger, J., & Mueller, H. G. (2008)

Bone Conduction Transducer

Bone Ossilator: This is used during bone conduction tests to admit sound vibrations to the inner ear to determine where the issue is in the ear! If a person can hear this in the inner ear, we know problem is in outer or middle ear. It basically jumps to testing inner ear problems.

Range: 250-4000 Hz

Speech assessment

Some audiologists will use speech tests to help determine hearing loss.

Speech Reception Threshold: softest level a person can understand 50% of two-syllable words.

Audiologists will also test word recognition ability and Speech in Noise Test to see a patient's ability to understand speech in the presence of background noise.

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