What to Expect From Your Hearing Specialist
Before you experienced hearing loss, you may have never even thought about the role of a hearing specialist.
Once you begin to notice difficulty hearing, setting up an appointment is the first step toward getting on the road to regaining your ability to hear during your everyday life.
Let's take a look at what you can expect from your specialist during the initial appointment and subsequent follow-ups.
Detailed Hearing Test Your hearing professional will run you through a detailed hearing test to assess what you can and can't hear in a variety of settings.
You may have a traditional test that has you indicate whether you hear tones at particular frequencies to determine whether your hearing loss is restricted to especially high or low noises.
You also may have to identify particular spoken words with varying levels of background noise.
Sometimes you will be asked to bring someone with a familiar voice to your appointment to test whether you're able to identify speech by a familiar voice.
Learning How Your Ears Work Throughout your appointment, you'll learn a lot about how your ears work.
The specialist will likely explain the role of each part of the ear, including the ear canal, eardrum, each bone in your inner ear, and the cochlear nerve.
After all, the hearing professional is a medical doctor with detailed experience learning how everything in your ear works.
You'll learn which parts of your hearing are impaired and what was likely to have caused the hearing loss you are experiencing.
Explanation of Treatment Options The last phase of your appointment includes an explanation of what treatment options are available to you.
Although most people assume that they'll need to get hearing aids, there are other treatments available as well.
For example, cochlear implants are ideal for some patients who have damage that cannot be corrected by hearing aids.
Your provider can also explain a wide range of assistive listening devices that are available to supplement or replace hearing aids in some situations.
Follow-Up Appointments Getting help from a hearing professional is not just a one-time event.
After getting your hearing aids or other treatments, you'll likely go through additional tests to determine how much of your hearing you have regained.
The hearing aid provider can also help explain your hearing aids to you to ensure that you know how to use all of their features to get the most out of them.
Lastly, you will also want to schedule periodic follow-up appointments to test your hearing and recalibrate your hearing aids if you go through additional hearing loss in the future.
Once you begin to notice difficulty hearing, setting up an appointment is the first step toward getting on the road to regaining your ability to hear during your everyday life.
Let's take a look at what you can expect from your specialist during the initial appointment and subsequent follow-ups.
Detailed Hearing Test Your hearing professional will run you through a detailed hearing test to assess what you can and can't hear in a variety of settings.
You may have a traditional test that has you indicate whether you hear tones at particular frequencies to determine whether your hearing loss is restricted to especially high or low noises.
You also may have to identify particular spoken words with varying levels of background noise.
Sometimes you will be asked to bring someone with a familiar voice to your appointment to test whether you're able to identify speech by a familiar voice.
Learning How Your Ears Work Throughout your appointment, you'll learn a lot about how your ears work.
The specialist will likely explain the role of each part of the ear, including the ear canal, eardrum, each bone in your inner ear, and the cochlear nerve.
After all, the hearing professional is a medical doctor with detailed experience learning how everything in your ear works.
You'll learn which parts of your hearing are impaired and what was likely to have caused the hearing loss you are experiencing.
Explanation of Treatment Options The last phase of your appointment includes an explanation of what treatment options are available to you.
Although most people assume that they'll need to get hearing aids, there are other treatments available as well.
For example, cochlear implants are ideal for some patients who have damage that cannot be corrected by hearing aids.
Your provider can also explain a wide range of assistive listening devices that are available to supplement or replace hearing aids in some situations.
Follow-Up Appointments Getting help from a hearing professional is not just a one-time event.
After getting your hearing aids or other treatments, you'll likely go through additional tests to determine how much of your hearing you have regained.
The hearing aid provider can also help explain your hearing aids to you to ensure that you know how to use all of their features to get the most out of them.
Lastly, you will also want to schedule periodic follow-up appointments to test your hearing and recalibrate your hearing aids if you go through additional hearing loss in the future.