Hearing Evaluations

Do you suffer from hearing loss?

The audiologists at Fayetteville Otolaryngology can help you understand the severity of your hearing damage or loss and provide you with the best method of treatment. The decision to do something about your hearing is an important step.

Fayetteville Otolaryngology provides comprehensive hearing evaluations for:

• Children
• Teens
• Adults

A diagnostic hearing evaluation is the first step in determining level of your hearing impairment. If you suffer from hearing loss, the evaluation will determine the extent, type, and specifics of your hearing loss. The diagnostic hearing evaluation is performed by one of Fayetteville Otolaryngology’s board certified audiologists.

A standard hearing evaluation may consist of various tests to determine your hearing loss, as well as the level at which you can detect and understand speech. This evaluation can be used on people of all ages.

A hearing evaluation may include the following tests:

• Air conduction testing
• Bone conduction testing
• Speech testing
• Distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAE) testing
• Auditory brainstem response (ABR) testing
• Tympanometry or acoustic immittance testing

Diagnostic Audiometric Tests

Comprehensive audiometry

is comprised of various tests to help the audiologist determine the type and degree of hearing impairment a patient is experiencing. The tests can be performed on almost every patient. The tests include:

• Pure tone audiometry
  This test, using pure tone signals, is designed to determine a patient’s hearing sensitivity for a range of typical tones people hear every day. The patient is seated in a sound treated room, where he or she will listen for specific tones under earphones. If warranted, the test will be repeated with bone conduction headphones to determine if the hearing impairment is present in the middle ear.
• Speech audiometry
  This speech test involves detection and discrimination tasks. To determine whether a patient processes the sounds of speech normally, speech discrimination is useful. When the scores for speech discrimination are good enough, this usually indicates a patient can benefit from amplification.
• Immittance audiometry
  This test is used to determine the amount of resistance present in the middle ear system. The test measures tympanometry and acoustic reflexes. Tympanometry determines the flexibility of the tympanic membrane, or eardrum. While acoustic reflexes assess both nerve conduction and the middle ear system. These Immittance tests assist in confirming the presence of middle ear fluid, a perforation, or a functioning ventilation tube.
• Evoked otoacoustic emissions (OAEs)
  To assess the function of the cochlea, OAE tests rely on the natural phenomena, emissions, which occur in normally functioning ears. An Emission (a weak signal) is returned from the inner ear through the tympanic membrane when the normally functioning cochlea is stimulated with sound. Audiologists record this emission with special microphones that are placed in the ear canal.
• Electronystagmography (ENG)
  This test involves a number of tests to assess balance function. ENG tests have a main goal to isolate abnormal dizziness to either the inner ear(s) or central nervous system.
• Auditory brainstem (ABR)