- General Hearing Loss Prevention
- Age-Related Hearing Loss
- Newborn Hearing Screenings
- Hearing Loss in Children
- Tinnitus: Ringing in Your Ears!
- Dizziness
What's an Audiologist?
Audiologists are health care professionals who evaluate, diagnose, treat, and manage hearing loss, tinnitus, and balance disorders in newborn, children, and adults. Audiology is a well-respected and highly recognized profession. Audiology has been ranked by U.S. News and World Report as one of the Best Careers in 2006, 2007, and 2008.
- Audiologists
- prescribe and fit hearing aids
- recommend and program implantable hearing devices, including cochlear, bone-anchored, middle ear, and auditory brainstem implants
- perform ear- or hearing-related surgical monitoring
- design and implement hearing conservation programs and newborn hearing screening programs
- provide hearing rehabilitation training such as
- auditory training
- speechreading
- listening skills improvement
- While most audiologists earn a doctor of audiology (AuD) degree, there are other doctoral degrees that audiologists can obtain, i.e. PhD, ScD, etc., from accredited universities with special training in the prevention, identification, assessment, and treatment of hearing disorders.
- Audiologists must be licensed in most states.
- Audiologists treat all ages and types of hearing loss: adults, teens, children, and infants.
- Audiologists work in a variety of settings, such as
- Hospitals, clinics, private practices, ENT offices, universities, K-12 schools, government, military, and VA hospitals.
- Almost all types of hearing loss are treatable by an audiologist.
- Most hearing loss that is caused by nerve damage can be treated by an audiologist with hearing aids, assistive listening devices, and hearing rehabilitation.
The Services We Offer
Hearing and Tinnitus Testing:
- Tympanometry - is an examination used to test the condition of the middle ear and mobility of the eardrum (tympanic membrane) and the conduction bones by creating variations of air pressure in the ear canal.
- Acoustic Reflex Testing - The acoustic reflex (also known as the stapedius reflex, middle-ear-muscles (MEM) reflex, attenuation reflex, or auditory reflex) is an involuntary muscle contraction that occurs in the middle ear in response to high-intensity sound stimuli or when the person starts to vocalize.
- Pure Tone Air & Bone Conduction - A basic pure tone hearing test checks your ability to hear tones of different pitches in each ear. ... You will indicate when you hear a tone by pushing a button or raising your hand. Bone Conduction audiometry is conducted by placing a bone oscillator behind the ear instead of using headphones.
- Speech Testing - This test is similar to the pure tone test, but instead of listening to different tones, you listen to certain words spoken at different volumes, which you are asked to repeat.
The results allow the hearing health care professional to prepare an audiogram which helps him determine your speech reception threshold.
The speech reception threshold shows how well you hear and understand ordinary conversation. - Otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) - OAE stands for otoacoustic emissions, the name for the sounds produced by the cochlea. These sounds can be used to test the function of the cochlea (specifically hair cell function) and other parts of the ear, including the auditory nerve.
- Visual reinforcement audiometry (VRA)- Visual reinforcement audiometry (VRA) is a test that allows an audiologist to assess hearing in infants and toddlers too young for normal tests. VRA relies on behavioral conditioning to train very young kids to respond to sounds. It is designed for children aged 6 months to around 2 to 3 years old.
- Conditioned play audiometry (CPA)- Conditioned play audiometry (CPA) allows an audiologist to test the hearing of very young toddlers and preschoolers. CPA uses behavioral conditioning to get kids to respond to sounds. It is designed for children between 2 and 5 years of age.
- Auditory brainstem response (ABR)- he auditory brainstem response is an auditory evoked potential extracted from ongoing electrical activity in the brain and recorded via electrodes placed on the scalp. The measured recording is a series of six to seven vertex positive waves of which I through V are evaluated.
Balance Testing:
- VNG - Videonystagmography (VNG) is a technology for testing inner ear and central motor functions, a process known as vestibular assessment.
- VEMPS - The vestibular evoked myogenic potential (VEMP or VsEP) is a neurophysiological assessment technique used to determine the function of the otolithic organs (utricle and saccule) of the inner ear. It complements the information provided by caloric testing and other forms of inner ear (vestibular apparatus) testing.
- Dix Halpike/Roll Test - The Dix–Hallpike test — or Nylen–Barany test — is a diagnostic maneuver used to identify benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV).