Carolina Hearing Doctors has audiologists providing hearing tests in North Carolina. Our clinics are located in Winston-Salem and Clemmons, NC.

Hearing tests, also known as audiometric evaluations, checks an individual’s auditory system and identify any hearing problems. These tests are performed by audiologists.

Carolina Hearing Doctors has licensed audiologists who are experts in the diagnosis and treatment of hearing disorders.

How To Choose The Right Audiologist

Choosing the right audiologist is important for your hearing improvement. Audiologists have doctoral and master degree training and spend multiple years training about hearing, hearing loss, and treatment. Seeing an audiologist is the first step to ensure your best hearing improvement.

In choosing an audiologist first find one who you communicate easily with. You will be spending some amount of time with them so a good, easy relationship is important.

It’s good to choose an audiologist who has years of experience working with hearing loss and hearing technology.

Ask about their training, and if they are certified. You can also read reviews or ask friends and family if they know a good audiologist.
Make sure the audiologist listens to your concerns and answers your questions. It’s important to find someone who will take care of not only your hearing but also you ears.

Audiologists at Carolina Hearing Doctors are licensed professionals with years of experience in diagnosing and treating different hearing problems. We take special care of each patient and provide the best compassionate hearing care services in North Carolina.

With over 20 years of experience, we are a trusted source for hearing help in Winston-Salem and Clemmons, NC.

Importance Of Getting Hearing Tests From An Audiologist

When it comes to hearing evaluation, it’s important to work with an audiologist who follows best practices to get accurate results.

Seeing a university trained audiologist is important because their specialty training offers your best ear examination and hearing improvement.

Unlike hearing aid sellers, audiologists can examine and diagnose many types of hearing issues, not just sell hearing aids. They are educated to spot medical problems related to hearing loss and suggest the right treatments.

At Carolina Hearing Doctors we care about your overall health and how your hearing effects your well being. We provide complete care, including advice and support, about a wide range of ear and hearing problems.

Choosing an audiologist for your examination means you get a more thorough and medically-informed approach to your hearing health.

Why Would I Need a Hearing Test?

Hearing tests detect any hearing problems but also the overall health of your entire auditory system, from your ear through your brain. These tests help audiologists find the best way to treat every part of your hearing problem.

During the hearing tests, we measure how you hear a variety of sounds and frequencies, and also how clearly you understand speech, both in quiet places and noisy ones. Other tests measure the status of your ear drum, middle ear, and processing centers within the brain.

With these results, we can tell you the likely cause of your hearing loss and the best treatment for you, whether it’s hearing aids, surgery, or cochlear implants.

What Are The Types of Hearing Tests?

There are a variety of hearing tests that evaluate different areas of your auditory system. Each is important to gain a complete picture of your particular hearing problem.

  • Pure-Tone Audiometry: This test measures the softest sounds a person can hear across different frequencies. While wearing small earphones you respond to tones across various pitches.
  • Speech Audiometry: This measures how clearly you understand words and speech. It compares how you understand at the very softest voice level, at normal conversation levels, and then at your preferred listening level. It also measures how clearly you understand speech in background noise.
  • Tympanometry: This examines the health and function of the middle ear. It measures the mobility of the eardrum and the pressure in the middle ear to identify treatable conditions in the middle ear or problems with the eardrum.
  • QuickSIN (Quick Speech-in-Noise): QuickSIN is an important test to measure a person’s ability to understand speech in noisy environments. Many people with hearing loss feel they hear well in quiet settings but lose clarity in busy background noise. This test mimics those busy settings like restaurants to allow us to measure your actual hearing clarity with those settings.
  • Otoacoustic Emissions (OAEs): This test helps assess the health of the cochlea, specifically the tiny hearing hair cells. Helping us identify more specifically the cause of your hearing loss.
  • Real Ear Measurements (REMs): REMs is the most important test we do with hearing aids in your ears. It allows us to more precisely program hearing aids specifically to your ear anatomy, your hearing loss contour, and your need. This ensures that the device is delivering the correct amplification levels as prescribed by the audiologist. Only 30% of hearing practitioners perform Real Ear Measurement

These tests together provide a complete examination of your hearing ability. In combination they identify the hearing loss, its type, degree, and potential underlying causes. Audiologists use these tests to create the best treatment plan for your individual hearing situation, whether medical, hearing aids, or surgical.

Three Types of Hearing Loss

There are three main types of hearing loss: sensorineural, conductive, and mixed.

1. Sensorineural Hearing Loss:

Sensorineural refers to the most common type of hearing loss, accounting for 85% of people with hearing loss. The tiny hearing hair cell receptors in the inner ear are not as sensitive as they used to be. This commonly occurs from:

  • A natural change from aging or family history of hearing loss
  • Damage caused by loud sound or noise exposure – even if that exposure occurred many years ago. The hair cell receptors are damaged at the time of exposure but may not show as hearing loss until many years later.
  • Disease or infection in the inner ear may result in a sensorineural hearing loss in 5-10% of people. There are usually other symptoms that lead us to this diagnosis.

    Sensorineural hearing loss impacts the ability to hear soft sounds and understand speech clearly. Common symptoms include
  • Hearing the voice but not understanding the words.
  • Sensing that people mumble or speak too low.
  • Problems distinguishing between similar-sounding words and sounds.
  • More difficulty in busy situations like restaurants and other noisy environments.

    Treatment usually involves fitting hearing aids and using other hearing technologies to stimulate the deficient frequencies and enhance hearing clarity.

Conductive hearing loss occurs when sound waves can’t efficiently pass through the outer or middle ear. The causes for this can be as simple as earwax buildup or ear canal blockage – issues that can usually be managed during the office examination. Other causes are more involved and can include ear infections, damage or perforation to the eardrum, or abnormalities to the delicate chain of bones in the middle ear.

This type of hearing loss typically affects the volume of sounds rather than clarity. Individuals might find that sounds are muffled or faint but also that their ear feels oddly full or dull.

Treatments range from removing earwax to treating the ear infections to more extensive surgical interventions.

Your complete audiological evaluation will help us discover these issues and direct you to the most appropriate treatment.

As the name suggests, mixed hearing loss is a combination of sensorineural and conductive hearing loss. This type involves damage to both the outer or middle ear and the inner ear or auditory nerve.

Causes could be a combination of factors, such as a history of chronic ear infections coupled with age-related hearing deterioration or noise exposure. Treatment may involve a combination of therapies targeting both the conductive and sensorineural components of the hearing loss. Most often hearing aids are used and are very successful at enhancing the hearing.

An Auditory Processing Deficit is not a type of hearing loss but is a condition caused by changes in the processing centers within the brain. While your ears perceive the sound it’s the brain that does all the interpretation. Changes within these brain processing areas cause their own type of understanding problem.

Auditory Processing Deficits may result from:

  • Longstanding, untreated hearing loss
  • Diseases such as dementia and Alzheimers disease greatly effect brain processing.
  • Age related changes to concentration, listening, and attention.
  • Other central influences like stroke and vascular problems.
  • Progressive neurologic disease like multiple sclerosis

This problem may occur with normal hearing but is also more common with hearing loss. The understanding centers in the brain are not reacting to sound as quickly or as accurately so it looks like the person “can’t hear”. It is most frequent in the elderly and is very common in those who have an untreated hearing loss for many years. Your processing clarity is likely to improve through a combination of hearing aids and improved listening habits. Sometimes auditory therapy can strengthen meaningful processing abilities.

Knowing what kind of hearing loss someone has is very important for figuring out the best way to help. This could mean getting medical treatment, using hearing aids, getting cochlear implants, or other ways to help with hearing. It’s important to remember that hearing loss is different for each person.

Hearing Test: What To Expect

Discussion of Hearing Problems

As with all health appointments we start start with a conversation to discuss the factors that may be contributing to your hearing problem. Medical history, environmental factors, family history, and other areas are examined. Your eventual treatment accounts for these factors to result in your best hearing improvement.

After we understand your unique history we do a variety of hearing evaluations to measure the extent of your hearing loss. We measure the effects of the hearing damage but also assess the capability of your remaining hearing. We measure the quietest sounds you can hear and the loudest sounds you can handle.

We measure how well you understand speech at normal conversation volume compared to your preferred volume, and in quiet situations versus noisy ones.

These tests take about 45 minutes and give us all the details we need to craft the best treatment plan to improve your hearing clarity.

Hearing test results provide details into your abilities for hearing sounds, frequencies, speech, and clarity. The results are presented in an audiogram—a graph displaying your hearing thresholds at different frequencies. This can demonstrate how much decline you have, ranging from mild to profound. It clarifies how your speech understanding is affected and to what degree you can expect improvement. It also reveals if your hearing loss is permanent, sensorineural, conductive, or mixed.

We explain all of these findings in detail and relate how your results explain your subjective hearing difficulty.

Understanding your hearing test results helps you make informed decisions about managing your hearing health. Regular follow-ups with the audiologist help track changes and ensure that the right treatments meet all of your needs.

The next steps involve discussions about treatment options. These include:

  • Medical referral for any ongoing treatable conditions.
  • Surgical referral if you’re in the 15% that may benefit from eardrum or middle ear surgery.
  • Discussion of hearing aids and hearing technology if you’re in the 85% who can benefit from hearing aid use.
  • Monitoring if you have minimal or mild hearing loss needing no treatment. .

Hearing Test FAQs

Will I need to do anything to prepare for a hearing test?

Typically, no special preparation is needed for a hearing test. However, it’s advisable to arrive with relevant medical information, including a history of ear-related medical issues, exposure to loud noises, and family history of hearing loss.. Consider noting any medications or concerns you have about your hearing. If you use hearing aids bring them along and be ready to discuss what you like about them and what needs improvement. Our audiologist will guide you through the process, and the test is painless and non-invasive.

Hearing tests are safe with minimal risks. Pure Tone Audiometry, Speech Audiometry, and other standard assessments pose no harm. Tympanometry involves changes in air pressure in the ear but is non-invasive and safe. Otoacoustic Emissions (OAEs) use low-level sounds, they are usually brief and comfortable.

Individuals with certain medical conditions or sound sensitivities should inform the audiologist to ensure appropriate precautions are taken. Overall, hearing tests are low-risk and vital for early detection of hearing issues.

Online hearing tests may provide a preliminary indication of hearing function but are not as reliable as in-person assessments by audiologists. Factors such as environmental noise, headphone quality, and calibration can affect accuracy. Online tests lack the depth, scope, and precision of comprehensive evaluations performed by professionals. They may be useful for initial awareness but should not replace thorough diagnostic assessments for accurate diagnosis of underlying medical conditions. This information then leads to the most appropriate treatment for your specific hearing issues.

While some smartphone apps claim to offer hearing tests, their reliability is questionable compared to professional evaluations. These apps typically lack the precision and calibration necessary for accurate results. Factors like ambient noise and headphone quality can further impact reliability. While these apps may raise awareness about potential hearing issues, consulting with a licensed audiologist for a comprehensive, in-person hearing test remains the most reliable and recommended approach for accurate diagnosis and appropriate intervention.

Hearing Tests in North Carolina

Carolina Hearing Doctors audiologists provide comprehensive hearing tests in Winston-Salem and Clemmons, NC.

You can help yourself or a loved one focus more on “hearing” and put “loss” behind you. 

We can help. Your return to easy hearing starts with a phone call for examination – (336) 794-8212 – or an email to Info@CarolinaHearingDoctors.com.

Contact us today to start your journey to better hearing!