Hearing Tests and Evaluations

We start with a conversation. When did you first notice a change? Which situations are hardest — a restaurant, a meeting, the television, one particular voice? That history shapes the testing, and it shapes what we do with the results.

Testing itself is comfortable and takes place in a sound-treated room. You will be asked to respond to tones at different pitches and volumes, and to repeat back words at levels we vary deliberately. We also look in the ear canal and check how the eardrum and middle ear are moving.

Your results are plotted on an audiogram. We will go through it with you rather than handing you a chart, because the shape of the loss is usually more useful than a single number. Two people with the same overall loss can have very different day-to-day experiences.

If treatment makes sense, we will say so and explain the options. If it does not, we will say that too. If something in the results suggests you should be seen by a physician, we will tell you and explain why.

The chart you leave with has pitch running left to right, low to high, and loudness running top to bottom, quiet at the top. Marks nearer the top mean better hearing. Right ear results are marked with circles and left ear results with an X.

Most age-related and noise-related loss slopes downward to the right: the low pitches are close to normal and the high ones are not. That shape explains a complaint people often struggle to describe — that speech is loud enough but not clear. Vowels carry most of the volume and sit low; the consonants that carry the meaning sit high. Lose the top and you lose the difference between fifteen and fifty, or between thin and sin, while everything still sounds perfectly loud.

There is a second line on most audiograms, taken through a small vibrator behind the ear. Where that line sits relative to the first is the whole diagnostic question: together, sensorineural; apart, something in the outer or middle ear blocking sound on its way in.

A normal result is not a wasted appointment. It rules out the thing you were worried about, and it becomes the baseline every future test is compared against — which matters more than people expect, because change over time is far more informative than a single reading.

A conductive result points at something treatable and often at a physician rather than at us. A sensorineural result opens the conversation about whether amplification is worth trying, and when. A difference between the two ears is not automatically a referral. When that difference is significant, new since a previous test, or comes with other symptoms, we will refer you to a physician and explain why.

We will go through the chart with you rather than handing it over. If something in it means you should be seen by a doctor, we will say so plainly and explain why, and that conversation is part of the appointment rather than an upsell to a further one.

The person who noticed the change is frequently not the person who has it. Hearing loss arrives slowly enough that the brain accommodates, and the most reliable early reporter is usually a partner or an adult child describing specific situations rather than the patient describing a symptom.

There is a second reason, which is that a second set of ears remembers the explanation. Results, options and next steps are a lot to absorb in one sitting, and decisions made afterwards tend to be better ones when two people heard the same account.