Hearing Test For Children & Adults
Why Have a Hearing Test?
Hearing loss is more prevalent than asthma, heart disease, cancer, or diabetes - and it can have wide-ranging effects on your general health and wellbeing.
Hearing loss can affect anyone regardless of age and as the loss is often gradual, you may not even notice you have an issue until you start to experience symptoms. So undertaking a baseline hearing test and annual follow-up hearing tests can help you identify and treat any hearing issues early.
The purpose of a hearing test is to determine not only if you have a hearing loss, but how mild or severe it is. Diagnostic hearing test can also help define the type of hearing loss you have and whether it will respond best to medical treatment i.e., a Cochlear implant or hearing aids.
Hearing loss can affect anyone regardless of age and as the loss is often gradual, you may not even notice you have an issue until you start to experience symptoms. So undertaking a baseline hearing test and annual follow-up hearing tests can help you identify and treat any hearing issues early.
The purpose of a hearing test is to determine not only if you have a hearing loss, but how mild or severe it is. Diagnostic hearing test can also help define the type of hearing loss you have and whether it will respond best to medical treatment i.e., a Cochlear implant or hearing aids.
Diagnostic Hearing Assessment for Children & Adults
1. Puretone Audiometery: Pure Tone Audiometry is an important part of the test battery to determine both the degree, type and configuration of your hearing loss. This information is important for prescribing the most appropriate hearing aid, if required. This information is also used to verify and fine-tune hearing aids to your individual ears.
2. Ear pressure check (Tympanometry): This test is usually performed as a cross-check with other tests but is also used to assess the status of the middle ear (ear drum and middle ear cavity). The results of this test can give your Audiologist insights into possible middle ear pathologies of the middle ear as well as confirming a conductive or mixed hearing loss
Hearing Assessments for Children
Ear & Hearing clinic is passionate about testing children's hearing and ensuring they receive the necessary help in a timely manner. We are experienced at obtaining accurate test results while at the same time making your child feel comfortable and relaxed. To help with this, we are dedicated to paediatric testing to make sure your child is comfortable, relaxed and ready to perform at their best.
There are many different characteristics of hearing loss in a child. These may include behavioural problems at school, decline in academic progress, TV needs to be turned up and asking for repeats just to name a few.
Your child's age and ability will determine the battery of audiological tests that we will perform on the day. It will also be dependent on the kind of information we are trying to obtain.
Diagnostic Hearing Assessment includes air and bone conduction thresholds at all octave frequencies and an evaluation of the ear drum. A report is provided on request.
For children in this age group, the primary reason most get a hearing assessment is to rule out hearing loss for a speech and language delay. We provide the following service for children in this age group:
Hearing Assessment using play audiometry measuring air conduction thresholds at all 500Hz, 1kHz, 2kHz and 4kHz. These are the most important frequencies to hear for speech and language development and can quickly answer the question of whether the child has adequate hearing for speech. To assist in clinical management, bone-conduction thresholds may also be sought. You can also expect tympanometry which can tell us if there is any fluid behind the eardrum (a common cause of a temporary conductive hearing loss). A report is provided on request.
Unfortunately babies and toddlers up to the age of around 2 are too young to be tested reliably. If you have any concerns regarding the hearing of your baby/toddler, we recommend you get a referral from your GP to a HSE diagnostic audiology department at your local hospital.
We provide timely hearing assessment reports for pre-employment medical screening including commercial drivers license, aviation license, police force applications, all manufacturing and industrial jobs.
Our Services
How can we help you?
Our state-of-the-art equipment allows us to carry out your diagnostic hearing test in world class soundproof booth for accurate test results.
Hearing Loss
Hearing loss is a reduced ability to hear speech and other sounds. Hearing loss, also called hearing impairment, can present itself in many different ways for different people. For example, it can be temporary or permanent, it can affect one or both ears, and it can vary greatly in severity from one individual to the next. While some people may experience complete loss of hearing in one or both ears, most people with hearing loss will experience a partial loss of hearing.
These individuals may have a reduced ability to hear certain pitches of sounds, and they may require certain sounds to be louder than normal in order to hear them. Hearing loss can vary in severity, ranging from mild to profound. Some people may have a mild hearing loss for low-pitched sounds (such as vowel sounds) and a severe hearing loss for high-pitched sounds (such as “th” and “sh” sounds). As you can see, hearing loss is not as straight-forward as simply “hearing” or “not hearing”, and this is one of the reasons why it may often be overlooked.
Hearing loss will typically result in difficulty understanding speech. In particular, it often presents itself as difficulty hearing high-pitched sounds; this can make many high-pitched consonants such as “s” and “f” difficult to distinguish, which results in reduced clarity of speech. Some individuals with hearing loss may hear vowel sounds quite well, with hearing loss primarily affecting their ability to hear higher-pitched consonant sounds. For most people with hearing loss, it’s not that they don’t hear; they are simply lacking clarity in what they do hear. They may be “hearing” but not necessarily “understanding” what was said, or misunderstanding parts of what was said. Because some of the important speech sounds are not being heard properly, similar words may start to sound the same (ex: “pass” versus “path”, or “tie” versus “pie”); the words within a sentence may not be distinct from one another; and it may start to seem as though other people are mumbling.