Receiving a Diagnosis at a Hearing Center

When was the last time that you visited a hearing center? Or have you ever?

Hearing is something that no one automatically has tested on a routine basis as it is not part of a physical examination by a health care provider. The majority of individuals do not often give their hearing much thought until they begin to notice that they are having a problem hearing voices on the telephone or have problems keeping in tune with conversations. Or perhaps they have started to turn up the television until the volume is very loud to the point where other people are disturbed by the excessiveness of it.

A visit to the doctor's office is often a necessity if you notice that any of these situations are happening in your life on a more or less regular basis. In some elementary schools throughout the nation routine hearing tests are given to students at the same time as visual tests but for those who are older they are left to figure out that a problem exists all by themselves. This is when a trip to a hearing center becomes a priority on your to-do list that needs to be moved to the top of the list.

A hearing loss diagnosis is not something that a physician can make until he finds out the patient's medical history and then performs a physical exam. The health care practitioner must first discover if the problem is not directly related to a hearing problem such as swelling, inflammation, a buildup of fluid or pus in the eardrum area or something similar. Any of these symptoms would point to an ear infection and not a hearing impairment. Ear infections can temporarily affect a person's hearing but with antibiotics and/or ear drops the situation can improve and the auditory problem would then go away. This is often the situation with young children but can also take place in those who are older.

Your doctor can do some hearing tests in his office if he has reason to believe that you may have become afflicted by a hearing problem. If the tests show that you do have an unfortunate auditory circumstance then your physician will also refer you to an audiologist at a hearing center in your town or city. This type of professional is a hearing specialist. He or she will perform an audiologic evaluation at the hearing center to make a diagnosis of how badly your hearing has been affected and the level of severity. He or she will also be looking to uncover which section of your ear(s) is affected and from there what treatment would be best.

The hearing specialist will have various clinical tools that he can put to use to help to decide how you can be helped the most. He can also use scientific technologies which can accurately measure your auditory acuity.