Weber Hearing Tests
March 13th, 2010Detection is the best chance a person can have to prevent or halt hearing loss in its tracks. Hearing loss can be a side effect of some disease, medication or can be caused by being exposed to loud sounds. Sometimes hearing loss is something you are born with, as some parts of the ear may not have formed completely or correctly.
Other times, hearing is a temporary thing caused by some kind of sickness a person caught from someone else. Astonishingly, taking medicines can very well give you loss of hearing as well as being sick. Another very common way of a person losing their sense of hearing is by injuring themselves.
A very loud environment with dangerous decibel levels of noise is another common cause of hearing loss. Motor vehicles are the easiest and most common examples of noise pollution as are sirens and construction work. Gunfire, explosions, fireworks do not occur very often in a living in a city scenario, but can be extremely dangerous to the ears.
Whatever the reasons for hearing loss, the number one cure for it is prevention, and the first step for prevention is through diagnosis. Detecting loss of hearing early on allows specialists more time to save the ear while damage to it is still young and may still be reversible. To detect hearing loss a person undergoes what is called a hearing test.
The easiest way to determine the type of the hearing aid is by examining where it is worn by the user. Hearing aids that are worn behind the ear and is made up of a case, tube and ear mold are called BTE aids. With the BTE, only the ear mold is placed inside the ear thus there is less risk of moisture and earwax damage to the whole device.
Cochlear implants are another type of hearing aid and this device is implanted into you to replace your malfunctioning cochlear. The device is implanted surgically underneath the scalp and right behind the hearing impaired ear. The bionic ear is made to work similarly like the real cochlea and that is to gather the surrounding sound, convert these into electronic impulses, then transmits these to the brain through electrodes.
Another hearing test is performed using what are called the Weber and Rinne tests, which are used to detect conductive or sensorineural hearing loss. 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 Weber test is a simple and quick screening test for hearing loss while the Rinne test is performed to confirm the nature of hearing loss whether conductive or sensorineural.
The tuning fork is first placed in the exact middle of the forehead in the Weber test. If the patient has normal hearing or symmetrical hearing or has the same level of hearing loss for both ears, the sound heard will be the same in both ears. When the sound heard is not equal in both ears then the patient has a definite asymmetric hearing loss.
The Rinne test is administered after the conclusion of the Weber test, to find out which type of hearing loss is present. The tests are also used to figure out which ear has which type of hearing loss. These tests are the easiest and fastest way of diagnosing hearing loss.