Hearing & Speech Institute of Oregon

A diagnostic hearing evaluation takes about an hour to complete. During this time a thorough case history will be obtained. This history may shed some light on the causes of your hearing loss. Medical issues may be uncovered as a contributing factor to any difficulties, and certain symptoms may lead to clues about the cause of hearing loss.

Your evaluation should be conducted in a sound-treated room. Many patients feel this environment is not representative of the "real world," and they are correct. Testing in a sound room does, however, give the most accurate information about the type and extent of damage to the hearing mechanism. By using the information obtained in a quiet sound-treated room, we can predict "real world" performance.

During the evaluation, you will be asked to listen for tones of different pitches. Speech sounds are made up of a combination of pitches ranging from very deep and bass, to very high and shrill. We are able to look at the softest sounds you are able to detect at each of these pitches, and are able to determine which of the specific speech sounds will be most affected by a specific hearing loss.

The pattern created by graphing the softest sounds that a patient can hear is called an audiogram. The above diagram shows the audiogram of a patient with a typical hearing loss. On this audiogram you will also see the location of some common speech sounds. Note that some of the breathy consonants such as "S," "F," and "T" are not loud enough for this patient to hear. Other sounds, however, are audible. This is the main complaint for a patient with a hearing loss: "I can hear, but I just can't always understand!" If hearing aids are appropriate, the goal is to amplify these inaudible sounds to a comfortable level.

What to Expect During a Hearing Evaluation