Diagnostic Services

A medical referral is usually required for diagnostic services. For example, adults and children may be referred by ENT consultant surgeons, paediatricians, neurologists and other medical practitioners. If you are uncertain about whether you need a referral from a medical practitioner please contact us for advice. If you are a medical practitioner and wish to make a referral, please contact our office to receive a list of our full range of services, diagnostic tests and assessment packages and prices.

We are well equipped to provide appropriate and accurate assessment of hearing and balance. As a part of this comprehensive service, our audiological scientist will provide a written report interpreting the results.

Hearing Tests (Audiological Testing)

Children referred for paediatric hearing assessment will have testing carried out that is appropriate to their developmental age and may include Visual Reinforcement Audiometry or play audiometric techniques. These approaches can be very enjoyable for children and involve the use of toys by a child in their response to sound or the use of toys to reinforce a young child's conditioned head-turning response to sound presented in the testing room.

The following are examples of some of the tests we might be asked to carry out with older children and adults. This is what you can expect to happen if you come to the Centre for these tests.

Pure tone audiogram (PTA)

This test requires you to listen to sounds or tones through headphones and to press a button when you hear the sound. It takes about 20 minutes and measures the hearing in both ears.

Speech Audiogram

A speech audiogram requires you to listen to speech through headphones and to repeat what you hear. This can help to determine how well you hear speech without any other clues such as lipreading and is a useful test to help find the most appropriate hearing aid for you.

Tympanogram

A small ear plug is placed at the entrance to your ear canal so that this test can measure the pressure in your middle ear behind the ear drum. It takes a few seconds and you feel a change of air pressure in the ear canal but no pain.

Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR)

This test is painless. It takes about 30 minutes and helps to show how well the hearing nerve is working. Small discs are placed behind each ear and on the forehead so on a computer we can record brainwaves in response to clicking sounds.