We always stress the importance of getting a hearing evaluation periodically. You might wonder, however, what it’s like when you visit us for one. Coastal Hearing Care prioritizes a comfortable experience and comprehensive evaluation that’ll give you the best possible understanding of your hearing fitness.
What to Expect at a Hearing Evaluation at Coastal Hearing Care
Let’s break down the assessment into four phases: Initial Conversation, Brief Examination, Diagnostic Testing, and Corrective Measures.
Initial Conversation
We start with a friendly conversation to get to know you and any hearing concerns you have. This involves sharing with us any lifestyle factors that could affect your hearing, such as a noisy work environment, hobbies that expose you to loud volumes, and so forth.
Brief Examination
Before we do the actual testing, your audiologist will inspect your ears with an otoscope to detect abnormalities or blockage. It’s common to find blockage or other problems with fluid, ear wax impaction, or debris in your ear canal.
Diagnostic Testing
Now, we arrive at the more technical evaluation process. This may be up to five tests, depending on your prior hearing conditions. Those include:
- Pure-Tone Air Conduction Test – This is the most well-known hearing test you may have gotten at your place of employment. Here, you wear a headset, listen for tones and beeps, and show when you hear them. This lets us know which sounds you hear and at what pitch they become audible.
- Bone-Conduction Test – This test uses a different type of headphone and allows the audiologist to better determine the hearing loss location.
- Speech Test – The speech test is another comprehension test where you’ll hear spoken words through headphones (at various volumes) and repeat them.
- Tympanometry – We place a probe into your ear and search for pressure changes around the eardrum. This is painless and allows to detect ear drum perforation and other problems.
- Otoacoustic Emissions Test – If necessary, we’ll use an even more sensitive probe that lets us test the small sound receptors in your inner ear.
Corrective Measures
Finally, as needed, we determine the best course of action for addressing potential hearing loss. This could be the use of a hearing aid or any other treatment tailored to your specific needs. All throughout the process you will get to ask questions and voice your concerns. In fact, we completely encourage it.
Coastal Hearing Care provides professional services for the diagnosis and treatment of hearing loss and other hearing conditions. We also supply many hearing aids and innovative technology for adjusting to many auditory difficulties. You can call us in Sarasota to learn more about our services at 941-229-2122.