Like any other medical treatment, hearing loss treatment and hearing aids are not one-size-fits-all. To effectively support your hearing, your care plan and devices must be customized to your specific needs. This process starts with a hearing test.
What We Learn from Your Hearing Test Results
A comprehensive hearing test at an audiologist’s clinic is not simply a pass-or-fail affair that tells you if you have hearing loss. Rather, it imparts a significant amount of data on your hearing health, including:
- Your hearing thresholds. A hearing threshold is the quietest volume at which you can hear. A comprehensive audiogram will provide a threshold for a wide range of pitches.
- Type of hearing loss. There are two main types of hearing loss: conductive and sensorineural. These two types differ in where the damage, breakdown or blockage in the hearing process occurs that causes you to struggle to hear.
- Bilateral vs. unilateral. Bilateral means your hearing loss is in both ears; unilateral means your hearing loss is in one ear.
- Severity. The severity of hearing loss can vary. The ranges are healthy, slight hearing loss, mild hearing loss, moderate hearing loss, moderately severe, severe and profound.
- Cause of hearing loss. Knowing your type of hearing loss, whether it was progressive or sudden and what your hearing thresholds are can contribute to a hypothesis on the cause of your hearing loss.
How We Use Your Results
As listed above, many variables are involved in hearing loss. It’s easy to say that almost 30 million people need hearing aids (and that’s true!), but every single one of those 30 million people has different needs. We use all the information listed above to determine what your hearing needs are and what treatment will work best for you. We use your results to guide what our recommendations will be and make suggestions about hearing protection.
For example, your hearing test might confirm that you have sensorineural hearing loss in both ears, and you particularly struggle with hearing high-pitched sounds, while your hearing thresholds for low-pitched sounds are still in healthy ranges. We’d probably recommend you wear a hearing aid in both ears, and we would customize those hearing aids to amplify just those pitches that you struggle to hear; no need to turn up the volume on sounds you can still hear well. Someone else, on the other hand, might have conductive hearing loss in just one ear; their treatment options would be very, very different.
Your Personalized Care Plan
We want to make sure you’re equipped with the treatment plan and devices that best meet your needs. It doesn’t do you any good to have any device that indiscriminately turns the volume up on the whole world. We make sure we give you the personalized attention that you need.
To get started with this process and get the care that’s right for you, contact Gary D. Schwartzberg, Au.D., Doctor of Audiology today to schedule an appointment for a hearing test. Once we have your results in hand, we’re ready to create a personalized care plan just for you.