Explaining the Audiogram
In this video, we're going to talk about the audiogram.
The audiogram is the form on which we record hearing test results.
So the way that the graph is laid out, the vertical lines across the top of the audiogram are just like the keys on a piano.
The keys over on the right side of the piano are high pitch keys. In the same way on the audiogram form, the lines over on the right side of the audiogram are high pitch sounds, the lines on the left side of the audiogram are just like the keys on the left side of the piano, low pitch sounds.
The further down we go on the audiogram, the louder the sound gets. Way at the bottom, it's very loud. Way up at the top, it's very soft. What I'm trying to do is figure out: how loud does each sound have to be before someone starts to hear the sound?
Somebody with normal hearing should hear all of these sounds above 25 decibels. Everything above the red line is normal.
Then we get into a mild hearing loss from 25 to 40 decibels. At this range, sometimes people notice difficulty, sometimes they don't.
From 40 to 60 is moderate hearing loss. Here, typically, people are going to start noticing difficulty, or at least others around them are going to notice some difficulty.
And then from 60, down to 90, we have moderately severe and severe loss. And then finally at the bottom, we have profound loss.
And then after that the nerve kind of starts to die, and you're really not hearing much sound at all.
So that's the way that the audiogram form is laid out.
We have an example audiogram below that we're going to use to explain how hearing loss works. This is a common type of hearing loss that I see in my office. The red circles represent the hearing in the right ear and the blue X's represent the hearing in the left ear.
In the case of this person and their audiogram, they're hearing the low pitch sound (the sounds over on the left), pretty good. They're not hearing the stuff over on the right very good at all.
Now as this relates to speech, the lower pitch sounds typically are more of the vowel sounds. And the higher pitch sounds represent the consonant sounds. Therefore, this person can hear the vowels good, but they can't hear the consonants very good at all.
Let's take the word “TOP”, as an example. In this word, there's three sounds: “T” “O” “P”.
(Click the letters below to hear the sounds each letter makes)
Using the person in our example audiogram, they can hear the “O” sound pretty good. But they're not hearing the “T” or the “P” very well at all. So I might have said “TOP” or I might have said “SHOP”, or “COP”, or “STOP”.
They can hear the vowel (the “O”), but they can't hear the consonants (“T” and/or “P”). They know that I'm talking, they can hear some of the sound coming out of my mouth, but they can't hear all of it. So they really have a hard time understanding what I'm saying.
So that's the audiogram form. That's how it's laid out. And that's one example of a hearing test result that I commonly see. Hopefully this makes sense. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at 1-800-441-1431.