Understand Your Hearing Health

Tympanometry is used to evaluate the function of the middle ear and ear drum. To complete this test, your audiologist will place a small, soft earphone in your ear and test how the middle ear system responds to a change in air pressure. Tympanometry is quick, painless, and an essential part of our test battery.

An acoustic reflex is the contraction of a small middle ear muscle in response to louder sounds. This measure is utilized to evaluate the middle ear, inner ear, and hearing nerve function. To perform this test, your audiologist will place a soft earphone in your ear and present louder tones. Upon presentation of the tones, the stiffness of the eardrum will be measured to determine if an acoustic reflex was elicited.

Just as an acoustic reflex contracts in the presence of a brief sound, the acoustic reflex should also be able to hold that contraction when the stimulus is presented over a longer period of time. Acoustic Reflex Decay may be utilized to evaluate the integrity of the acoustic reflex arc between your ears, providing vital information about a listener’s hearing system when certain concerns arise.

A behavioral evaluation tests your ability to hear certain speech and tonal sounds. Often referred to as the “audiogram”, this information provides a roadmap for your audiologist as they determine your hearing and listening needs and will provide insight into why you may experience certain problems when listening.

Do your ears always feel plugged, but your doctor says there is no signs of wax or middle ear fluid? You may be suffering from eustachian tube dysfunction. This test utilizes the same soft earphone used for tympanogram assessment. It is quick and simple and may provide you with the explanation you have been looking for as you have struggled to make sense of your “stuffy ears.”

We know that difficulty listening in background noise is often the number one complaint for individuals with hearing loss. As such, it is important that we evaluate this issue with formal speech in noise assessment during your visit. Often a sentence-based task, you will be asked to repeat sentences presented amidst varying levels and types of background noise. This evaluation is also a critical component for evaluation of benefit from use of amplification.