What Happens During a Hearing Test?

What to expect: The provider will shine a light with magnification to look into your ear canal.

What the results tell us: the health of your ear canal and ear drum.

What to expect: The provider will put a squishy tip in your ear to change the pressure in your ear canal. You don’t need to do anything but stay still and quiet.

What the results tell us: how well your ear drum can move. This can reveal if the ear has too much ear wax and/or fluid behind the ear drum among other things.

What to expect: The provider will place a squishy tip in one or both of your ears. You will hear very loud sounds. You will need to stay still and quiet. If the sound becomes too loud, remove the tip from your ear and tell your provider.

What the results tell us: information about many parts of your auditory system that your provider can use with other test results to make a diagnosis.

What to expect: The provider will put a tip in your ear and you will hear a variety of tones. You will need to stay still and quiet. This test is commonly used for children and patients who cannot complete a typical hearing test.

What the results tell us: information about the health and function of critical parts of your hearing system, the outer hair cells and cochlea.

What to expect: The provider will put headphones on you and ask you to respond whenever you hear a beep. You will respond either by raising your hand or pushing a button. You will need to respond every time you hear the beep even when it sounds very quiet or far away. This process will be repeated as you wear a bone oscillator, which will check a different part of your hearing system. The bone oscillator is a headband with a little box that sits behind your ear. It needs to be quite tight to work properly, but the provider will get the needed information as quickly as possible.

What the results tell us: how well you can hear different pitch tones. This gives your provider the degree of your hearing loss at each pitch (or frequency). Comparing the results from the headphones and bone oscillator allows the provider to determine what part of your hearing system is causing the hearing loss. This will help them determine what can be done to help you hear better.

What to expect: You will hear words through some form of headphones. The words should be at a level that makes them loud enough for you to easily hear them, but not so loud that they hurt your ears. You will repeat each word you hear as best you can.

What the results tell us: how well you can understand speech in a best-case scenario, i.e. loud enough, no distractions, no background noise, no reverberation, etc.

What to expect: You will wear some form of headphones and be asked to repeat target words or sentences while there are other voices speaking or another form of background noise.

What the results tell us: how you hear in real life. The world is a noisy place!