What is the Difference in a Hearing Screening and Hearing Test?

If you are keen to take care of your general health, one element that you should certainly focus on is your hearing and ear health. These are hugely important, and they can be tightly related to a range of other health conditions, so it’s vital that you keep on top of them. A major part of doing that is getting your hearing checked out by an audiologist, so that they can determine whether you have hearing loss or any other issues.

There are actually two major kinds of appointments that you might get from an audiologist: a hearing screening, and a hearing test. There is a chance that you might have both at different times. But what are they and how do they differ?

Hearing Screening

First of all, let’s look at the hearing screening. This is generally the most basic form of testing your hearing. Usually, a screening is a kind of preliminary test that is undertaken before other kinds of tests are done, so it is an essential process that you are going to want to use at certain points. After a screening, it should be obvious whether other, more in-depth forms of testing need to be done.

A baby will often receive a hearing screening after birth, and young children and adults might have a pure tone screening test. In that test, the user wears headphones to listen to a series of tones at different pitches and frequencies. The individual will give a signal when they hear a tone or when it changes.

Generally, this is a pass-or-fail test to determine whether further testing needs to take place.

Hearing Tests

If there is indeed a further need for tests, then a fuller hearing test might be carried out by an audiologist. There are actually many kinds of these that the audiologist might wish to use. For instance, they might want to carry out speech testing, to specifically determine whether you are hearing speech properly. Or they might want to do tympanometry, which helps to work out whether there are any issues with the inner ear, such as a wax buildup or perforated eardrum.

Beyond that, there is also a test known as acoustic reflex, which helps to work out how well your ears are functioning by checking the function of a tiny muscle in the ear that reacts to sound. Your audiologist will know which of these tests, if any, you need to undergo.

Utilizing the information from all this, the audiologist will then put together a hearing evaluation, which will provide an overall picture of your hearing and any issues that there might be there to deal with. This might include details of your hearing loss, if relevant, as well as possible causes – and of course ideas about treatment.

The good news is that hearing loss can be lived with quite easily, and the treatment is better than ever. If you want your hearing tested, get in touch with your audiologist at your earliest convenience.