Every testing appointment starts with you completing helpful questionnaires and a medical case history form. From there we’ll take time to discuss your health history, your current concerns, and your goals for the appointment and the future. Often rushed, Dr. Greenaway believes a good case history and patient interview is worth more than all the other tests combined. You can help us by asking your primary care provider or relevant specialist providers to send us records ahead of your appointment.

Good hearing starts with sound being able to pass easily into the inner ear. Every appointment includes otoscopy (looking in your ear with a manual or video scope). Audiologists are trained to look for skin disorders, infections, and abnormalities in your ears. From there we run a test called tympanometry that looks for conditions problem like pressure in the ears and problems with the tiny bones behind your eardrum.

“Push the button when you hear the beep.” This is the test most people know. By finding the softest volume you can hear at different pitches we can better understand how you hear and what sounds you may be missing in day-to-day life. This also helps us discuss solutions with you and is the basis of programming hearing aids.

Hearing beeps doesn’t tell us much about how you hear in the real world, so we also perform speech testing. We also know that the real world is noisy, which is why we always use speech-in-noise tests in addition to speech-in-quiet tests. These tests help us set realistic expectations and pick the technology, education, and auditory training that will have the biggest impact.

Did you know your ears don’t just listen, they talk back? Healthy ears produce very small sounds that our specialized equipment can hear. This isn’t a test we use for everyone, but it can be very helpful for tinnitus patients, ototoxic monitoring, and cracking the case on complex hearing losses.

The little tube with the big name that balances the pressure behind your ear drum. ETF testing is a specialized test that helps us see and understand middle ear pressure that may be missed by other tests.

Sometimes issues don’t come from the ears, but the nerves that connects your ears to the brain. Acoustic reflex testing, reflex decay, and other specialized tests help us figure out exactly what’s causing your hearing problems. We don’t use these tests often, but they are important when we need them.