Diagnostics

The Effects of Hear­ing Loss and Sound Voids™ can be min­i­mized if:

• Your prob­lem is cor­rectly diagnosed;
• You receive the right type of treat­ment; and
• You and your hear­ing care team are com­mit­ted to solv­ing the problem

Step One: The Inter­view
Pur­pose: To help your Audi­gyC­er­ti­fied™ pro­fes­sional deter­mine the extent of your prob­lem and uncover any spe­cific areas requir­ing fur­ther attention.

Some Typ­i­cal Questions:

• Has any­one else in your fam­ily had hear­ing difficulty?
• Have you had any ill­nesses or injuries that might have affected your hearing?
• Have you taken any med­ica­tions that might have affected your hearing?
• Have you been exposed to loud noises in your job or leisure activities?

Step Two: The Exam­i­na­tion
Pur­pose: To help your Audi­gyC­er­ti­fied pro­fes­sional deter­mine whether the Sound Voids you are expe­ri­enc­ing could be caused by an obstruc­tion or dam­age to the ear canal or ear drum. Your Audi­gyC­er­ti­fied pro­fes­sional will use a spe­cial instru­ment called an oto­scope or video oto­scope to inspect the outer ear.

Step Three: The Test­ing
Pur­pose: To help the hear­ing care pro­fes­sional deter­mine the nature of your Sound Voids. Tests, like the fol­low­ing, may be used depend­ing on their assess­ment of your needs:

• Audio­met­ric pure tone eval­u­a­tion to mea­sure your hear­ing at dif­fer­ent frequencies.
• Speech eval­u­a­tion to mea­sure how well you hear and under­stand ordi­nary con­ver­sa­tion at dif­fer­ent volumes.
• Immit­tance mid­dle ear eval­u­a­tion to mea­sure how your ear drum and hear­ing react to vary­ing degrees of air pressure.
• If you are suf­fer­ing from a hear­ing loss, your results will be doc­u­mented on an audiogram.

Step Four: Treat­ment Options
Hear­ing Sys­tems
Hear­ing sys­tems come in a vari­ety of designs, with a wide range of func­tions and fea­tures to address an individual’s spe­cific needs. The most basic com­po­nents include a micro­phone, an ampli­fier, a receiver, and (in the case of dig­i­tal hear­ing sys­tems) a small com­puter. The unprece­dented effec­tive­ness of mod­ern dig­i­tal sys­tems comes from a pow­er­ful com­bi­na­tion of pro­fes­sional exper­tise, soft­ware, and hardware.

Surgery & Implants
Devices sur­gi­cally inserted into the ear to improve hear­ing, facil­i­tate lip-reading, and make it eas­ier to dis­tin­guish cer­tain sounds. Typ­i­cally, these are most help­ful to deaf or pro­foundly hearing-impaired peo­ple unable to use hear­ing systems.

A few exam­ples of sur­gi­cal implants:

• Cochlear Implants
• Mid­dle Ear Implants
• Bone-Anchored Hear­ing Systems
• Audi­tory Brain­stem Implants

Assis­tive Lis­ten­ing Devices
Spe­cial­ized tech­nolo­gies that help peo­ple with all degrees of hear­ing loss. These devices can facil­i­tate improved face-to-face com­mu­ni­ca­tion, recep­tion of elec­tronic media, tele­phone recep­tion, and recep­tion of impor­tant warn­ing sounds and situations.