Hearing Test

The first part of your hearing evaluation consists of hearing tones. The purpose of this test is to find how much hearing a person has. Percentages are not used to indicate the amount of hearing loss. The terms mild, moderate, and severe-profound are limited descriptions designed to categorize your hearing loss. Many factors can influence the difficulty you may be experiencing with your hearing. For example, your environment, your personality or even your job or hobby may affect how you perceive your problems with hearing. This part of the audiogram relates to loudness of sounds.

Mild: Results are just outside the normal range of hearing (0-25 dB). People with mild hearing loss can usually understand normal conversations in a quiet room or environment, but may have difficulty in background noise situations. People with mild hearing loss may find that hearing instruments are needed in some situations.

Moderate: Results show that many sounds will be difficult to hear (25-70dB). Most consonant sounds will be difficult yet vowel sounds may still be audible. It will be difficult for your brain to process sounds in quiet but more difficult if you are listening in situations that contain background noise People with moderate hearing loss will benefit significantly from hearing aids and should wear them in all situations.

Severe-profound: Results show that all sounds (consonants and vowels) will be difficult to hear (70-105 dB). Generally even normal conversation is either not heard or perceived as very soft. If you have a severe-profound hearing loss hearing aids are essential for awareness of environmental sounds and conversation and should be worn in all situations.

The second part of the hearing test consists of repeating a list of words. The purpose of this test is to determine how well a person can recognize words when they are loud enough. The results are reported according to a percentage of correct responses. This part of the audiogram relates to the clarity of sounds.

Excellent discrimination: 84%-100%.

You are able to repeat a list of words with very few errors when the words are comfortably loud. Since hearing aids amplify speech to a comfortable level, this suggests that you will do very well with hearing aids.

Fair to Good discrimination: 48%-84%

These results indicate that even when words are loud enough, they are not always clear. Even though the speech may be presented clearly, it loses its clarity during transmission from the inner ear to the brain. Hearing aids will surely help, but you will still mis-hear words especially if they sound alike. You will notice more difficulty understanding speech when you are in a noisy setting versus a quiet setting even while wearing amplification.

Poor discrimination: 0%-48%

The range in this category includes people who hear about half of the words correctly, to people who get one or two words correctly out of a list of 20 words. The lower the person scores, the poorer their prognosis with hearing aids. People in this category experience great difficulty hearing speech clearly, even when speech is plenty loud. You may say things like "I can hear you, but I don't understand what you are saying." The prognosis for understanding speech even with hearing aids is poor. Even the clearest hearing aid cannot overcome the damage at the level of the inner ear or brainstem.

Why wear hearing aids if I have poor discrimination?

To sum it up accurately, "You need all the help you can get." While it is true that the hearing aids will not solve your hearing problems, you should notice that speech is easier to understand when it is loud enough. Your family and friends will also appreciate not having to yell to be heard.