subject: When Hearing Problems Develop [print this page] When Hearing Problems Develop When Hearing Problems Develop
All kinds of hearing tests are available for people who feel that their hearing is not as good as it once was and in this case you will be dealing with a process that is very simple. You will need to consult with an audiologist and he or she will administer various sound tests checking to see how well your hearing still is and what problems you may have. By using an audiometer, the audiologist will be able to measure how sensitive your ears are to certain sounds.
The first kind of hearing test is the one that makes use of an audiometer which evaluates your hearing skills I different frequencies but apart from this two other hearing exams are available. Another kind of hearing test is the Weber test. In this case, you can also use the Rinne test.
It is important to understand the workings of the audiometer because it is a main tool in hearing tests. After being placed in a soundproof booth, you will be subjected to a series of sound tests. Here, the person being evaluated will be required to wear a set of headphones that is connected to the main audiometer mechanism by the audiologist and then a series of sound tests in different frequencies will be administered and here is when the person being evaluated will be asked if he or she can hear anything and if sounds are still audible the examiner will ask the person to repeat what can be heard.
This is what a basic hearing test is like. The Weber test for hearing was named after Ernst Heinrich Weber and a vibrating tuning fork is used and placed in different facial areas. Here, what touches the fork are the areas that are equidistant to the ears like the chin or the middle of the forehead.
When it comes to this, you need to check if the person being evaluated has the ability to hear the sound coming from the vibration of the tuning fork in both ears. Usually, people hear a louder sound in an ear and a softer one in another. Although this is an effective test, you can only detect unilateral hearing conditions.
As an otologist from Germany, Heinrich Adolf Rinne was the one who came up with the Rinne test. Compared to the Weber test, this one is more scientific in the sense that it compares a person?s perception of sounds. In this case, the sounds are transmitted through the air or by bone conduction through the mastoid.
It is able to produce a high frequency sound and this is why a vibrating tuning fork is used by the Weber and Rinne tests. Up to the point when the sound deteriorates, the tuning fork is placed on the mastoid process by the examiner. Considering this, the examiner places the tuning fork outside the ear afterwards.
Some kind of sound can still be recognized by those without a hearing impairment. You will not be able to hear if you have a hearing problem. When it comes to the Rinne test, this is how problems are detected.
Coming with evaluations for hearing are speech evaluations. Here, the audiologist does not only play sounds at different frequencies but he or she may also ask the individual being evaluated to repeat the sounds that he or she hears. When it comes to hearing well, it is important that you distinguish words too.
Based on the results of a hearing evaluation, a person may be instructed to visit specialists if necessary. You need to consider treatments when it comes to hearing problems. When it comes to hearing loss, it might not be temporary.
