By: Joel Poole
Submitted: 2010-02-18 02:19:40 | Word Count: 623
A person has a better chance of treating his or her hearing loss problem when it is diagnosed early on. Illnesses, trauma, physical injuries all are known to cause hearing loss as is being exposed to loud sounds like at a concert or a construction yard. Aside from the above, hearing impairment can be a disability a person is born with, as some parts of the body may have formed improperly.
For some a person that becomes sick with something may be the reason for the hearing problem. Besides illnesses another thing that can cause loss of hearing is taking certain medication known to affect hearing like aspirin. Hearing loss can be the result of head injuries or concussions sustained from contact sports for example.
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The most common cause of hearing loss, however, whether it is gradual or instantaneous is due to noise pollution or environmental noise. Examples of this type of noise pollution are barking dogs, car alarms, industrial noise from factories and manufacturing plants. Types of noise pollution that are not encountered everyday but are very dangerous to the ears are fireworks or explosion sounds.
Like previously said, hearing loss is best treated when it is still early and there is no better way to treat it early by diagnosing it early too. A hearing disorder that is left to progress and age is more difficult to treat than one that is treated early on. To detect hearing loss a person undergoes what is called a hearing test.
To determine a person's hearing sensitivity he or she will undergo a hearing test using an audiometer. A soundproof booth with earphones provided, that are connected to an audiometer is the basic setup of this type of hearing test. The audiologist, pushes buttons on the audiometer to send sounds to the person sitting inside the booth.
Once the person hears to sound he or she will need to respond by pressing on a button to let the technician know. The data obtained from the test will be made into a graph. One look at the graph plotted out will expose what frequencies and volume sound cannot be heard by the subject.
To determine if the person is suffering from conductive hearing loss or sensorineural hearing loss, the Weber and Rinne tests are performed. In both the Weber and Rinne tests, a tuning fork is used to determine the kind and extent of hearing loss the subject is suffering from. The Rinne test is used to determine whether a person has sensorineural or conductive hearing loss, while the Weber test simply checks to see if hearing loss is indeed present.
The Weber test is administered by using and placing a tuning fork in the middle of the forehead. Someone with normal hearing or hearing loss that is the same in both ears will hear sound the same way in both ears. The only definite thing that can be concluded from this test is when the sound heard is not the same in both ears.
When the Rinne test is performed in connection with the Weber test, it is possible to detect whether the person has conductive hearing loss only or has sensorineural hearing loss as well. It does not seem like it, but the tests when performed in partnership can determine which ear has what type of hearing loss. Any specialist or expert that is knowledgeable will recommend all three tests.
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