The Right Time to See an Audiologist

Roughly one-fifth of Americans face a form of hearing loss. Regardless of age, hearing problems are widespread throughout the country. While many patients tend to put off seeking treatment for their condition, Audiologists can perform several tests to determine whether or not hearing loss is involved. If you’re experiencing something with your ears, it’s strongly advisable to seek medical help from a hearing specialist. Everybody can benefit from seeing an audiologist.

What does an audiologist do?

These doctors are specialists in hearing health. They examine and diagnose any hearing issues, offer treatments and aftercare. There are many health-related hearing issues they manage, which will include:

• Examining for tinnitus
• Hearing loss prevention
• Pain or discomfort in the ears
• Hearing complications
• Recommending assistive technology such as a hearing aid

The need to visit an audiologist is not limited to just the above tasks; it’s very important to visit your audiologist when you notice changes. Looking into the ear and hearing-related issues sooner could help prevent them from getting worse. There are four common reasons why patients visit the audiologist.

Hearing Health Check-Up

Audiologists examine the physical appearance of the ears as well as the hearing ability. The hearing ability is examined by a series of hearing tests. The tests can include the capacity of what the ears could hear such as different volumes of sound and different types of pitches. Unlike many specialists, you don’t need a referral from your general practitioner to see an audiologist.

While many patients will visit a general practitioner for hearing issues, they often lack an understanding of hearing health. Audiologists have received intense training to treat hearing disorders, while family doctors only know about general hearing health.

Excessive Production of Earwax

The ears can perform self-cleaning by moving earwax away from the eardrum. The occurrence of the ears producing too much earwax often happens when patients are wearing hearing aids or any other ear-insertion tools regularly. This causes pain and irritation in the ears due to the build-up of earwax against the eardrum. The audiologist can remove the irritating earwax from the ears.

Ringing in the Ears

It’s normal for patients to experience ringing if they’ve been to a loud event, such as a concert. Over time, this sort of ringing will resolve itself, but it can be serious if this ringing happens over an extended period. This could be tinnitus or a sign that the patient is losing their hearing. The audiologist can help by providing hearing aids or a device to obscure the ringing sound.

Hearing Loss

There are many reasons why the patient could experience hearing loss, it’s also just a natural occurrence when reaching old age. While hearing loss is common as people get older, it’s best to look out for:

• Mishearing conversations
• Asking people to repeat themselves
• High pitches are becoming difficult to hear
• Having to turn up the volume for devices

It’s important to seek treatment from an audiologist soon once these signs are being noticed. The audiologist can assess the patient’s situation and begin creating a treatment plan. A patient doesn’t need to experience hearing loss to visit their local audiologist. It’s important to have regular hearing assessments to improve one’s hearing health.