Hearing test interpretation, cure for tinnitus on the horizon - Within Minutes

The way to a hearing aid fitting often begins with a feeling that your hearing is not as it should be or that your hearing has worsened.
A hearing care professional determines with the help of a hearing test whether or not a hearing loss is present. From here on, the assumption is that you have a sensorineural hearing loss (that you have nerve damage to the inner ear). If all of the X's (for the left ear) and all of the 0's (for the right ear) fall above the line you just drew, you have normal hearing. Your hearing loss is classified according to how far down the graph the marks go, and in what freqencies the loss occurs. Evaluation of noise-induced hearing loss in young people using a web-based survey technique.
MP3 players and hearing loss: adolescents' perceptions of loud music and hearing conservation. Hearing health and care: the need for improved hearing loss prevention and hearing conservation practices. Screening for hearing loss in the elderly using distortion product otoacoustic emissions, pure tones, and a self-assessment tool. Adolescents and young adults represent groups in which the prevalence of hearing loss is increasing and may therefore benefit from screening. Making a serious mistake, family pressure, or safety concerns are also reasons people often cite for seeking a hearing solution. In the case where a hearing loss is present, the kind and degree of your hearing loss is determined individually for each ear and entered in an audiogram.


If offered, screening can be performed periodically by asking the patient or family if there are perceived hearing problems, or by using clinical office tests such as whispered voice, finger rub, or audiometry.
To minimize the number of false-positive results, sound levels in the test environment should not exceed American National Standards Institute (ANSI) requirements.21 A quiet booth that features sound-absorptive materials such as carpeting, acoustic foam, or tiles is considered standard practice. Pure-tone testing presents tones across the speech spectrum (500 to 4,000 Hz) to determine if the patient's hearing levels fall within normal limits. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association has a recommended procedure for pure-tone threshold search tests known as the modified Hughson-Westlake method.18 Testing begins with the ear in which the patient perceives to have better hearing. Screening audiometers for office use, for example, generally test at frequencies in the speech range of 500 to 4,000 Hz.There are many purchase options to consider for earphones and transducers.
A quiet testing environment, calibrated audiometric equipment, and appropriately trained personnel are required for in-office testing.
After the patient responds to the pure-tone signal, the tester decreases intensity by 10 dB and presents the tone again.
Unilateral or asymmetrical hearing loss can be symptomatic of a central nervous system lesion and requires additional evaluation. This is the patient's initial ascending response.To check for accuracy, the tester should decrease the intensity of the tone by 10 dB one more time to check for no response, then increase the intensity of the signal in 5 dB increments until the patient responds again to the signal. If the patient responds consistently (minimum two out of three responses in ascending order), the tester records the dB level at which the patient responds as the air conduction threshold. Courses leading to certification and recertification as an occupational hearing conservationist. Family physicians should feel comfortable performing this testing on adults and cooperative children.

Supplemental, objective tests such as evoked otoacoustic emissions testing (stimulation of hair cells to produce sound) and patient questionnaires can assist with difficult-to-test populations.30Recent noise exposure before pure-tone testing may affect the validity of the test results. Riding a loud motorcycle or listening to music through headphones may result in a temporary hearing threshold shift, and may not reflect the patient's true hearing thresholds.
Patients should minimize or avoid exposure to loud noise for at least 14 hours before pure-tone testing.31PHYSICAL FINDINGSAudiometry results may be affected in patients with anatomic anomalies, such as narrow or collapsing ear canals (stenosis of the ear canal), complete canal occlusion, or absence of an ear canal (atresia). Impacted cerumen can cause a conductive hearing loss (Figure 1) that typically resolves following cerumen removal. Placing an over-the-ear headphone over already narrow or closed ear canals may add sufficient pressure to collapse the ear canals even further, resulting in a false high-frequency hearing loss.
An otoscopic examination should be performed before the hearing test to ensure that the tympanic membrane is at least partially visible.Differentiating conductive hearing loss from sensorineural hearing loss requires bone conduction testing. With sensorineural hearing loss, there is no significant difference in threshold between air and bone conduction.Conventional pure-tone testing is used for adults and older children. Audiometry relies on techniques similar to the Weber and Rinne tests to compare air and bone conduction.

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