In Office Hearing Testing
Over the years, we have been frustrated with how little hearing screening is done. It seems to get done as an infant, perhaps with crude tonometry as a child, and then off it goes to audiology. Most don’t go. What a missed opportunity. The American Academy of Audiology recommends annual screening after the age of 3 years. We are pleased to announce that in our office we have an excellent device to screen for hearing deficits, and it can be used for all ages.
This is the actual device, an over the ear headset that plugs into a laptop. We will set you up in a quiet room and within a few minutes, the autopaced program will have tested each ear individually at frequencies ranging from 250 – 8000 Hertz and at intensity ranging from -20 to 100 Decibels. With positive and negative controls, the only thing it doesn’t seem to do is bone conduction. We will leave that to the professionals. Should there be a problem, our specialty colleagues are nearby and we will help get you an even more thorough exam for consideration of cause and treatment. Should things seem OK, then we just repeat it annually and follow along. This is the report that will be generated, which you can have and which we will save to the chart. We will incorporate this into the annual preventive care visit and of course use it on demand.
There are many reasons to have hearing loss, and most of us have some degree thereof. It could be from machinery at work, recreational music, firearms and military service, head trauma, illness, or genetic tendency. Knowing what degree of loss is present today helps make sense of all sorts of things:
• Maybe a child is pronouncing words wrongly.
• Maybe you can’t hear in a noisy environment.
• Perhaps family says you turn up the TV too loud.
• Maybe you can’t understand why everyone has to be told to speak up.
• Perhaps your parent is not as alert because of profound hearing loss.
There is an old adage in medicine: Don’t guess when you can measure. Let us measure your hearing.
