What Conditions Does An Audiologist Treat?

Typically, patients first learn of an audiologist when they are referred to them by a family doctor or general practitioner. However, you may have some issues related to your ear, hearing or balance health that you would like to have addressed by a specialist. There are no professionals that are better equipped to handle these needs than an audiologist. But what, exactly, does an audiologist treat and what conditions can they help you with?

While audiologists are equipped to help with a wide range of conditions, there are a few that they tend to help with more regularly. Here, we’re going to look at the conditions that audiologists treat on a regular basis, what the conditions are, the impacts they can have on you and what, exactly, an audiologist can do to help if they are affecting you.

Hearing loss

The vast majority of patients that see an audiologist will do so because they are having some experience of hearing loss or at least think that they are. This extremely common condition affects roughly one in five people through their lifetime. While typically it affects older people at a higher rate, it can be experienced at any age. Hearing loss can be caused by a range of things, whether it’s temporary causes such as earwax buildups, infections and fluid buildups or permanent loss due to age-related degeneration of hair cells or exposure to excessive noise.

Hearing loss comes in different severities, such as mild, moderate, severe and profound. In order to address hearing loss, an audiologist will inspect the ear itself for any visible signs of blockages and will then perform a hearing test to help you best understand your entire range of hearing. By doing so, they can diagnose hearing loss which then allows them to begin treatment.

In treating hearing loss, an audiologist will most likely help you select from the market of hearing aids to choose those that can improve your range of hearing, though cochlear implants are sometimes recommended, instead.

Tinnitus

Tinnitus is not, itself, a health condition. Rather, tinnitus is a symptom, one that can be caused by a wide variety of underlying issues, including hearing loss, trauma and the use of certain medications. Tinnitus is a symptom that’s described as hearing noises or sounds that don’t have a discernable source that others can hear. The sound can be heard in the ear or in the head, it can vary in frequency and volume, and it can sound like buzzing, ringing, melodies or a heartbeat.

Tinnitus can be experienced with a wide degree of difference from one person to the next. As such, audiologists have to treat it in a variety of ways, as well. It can be treated with hearing aid-like devices that offer sound masking properties as well as white noise machines that can cancel or drown out the sound of tinnitus, especially when a patient is trying to sleep.

There are also practices such as tinnitus retraining therapy, which are methods of therapy that may be able to help the individual get used to the sound of tinnitus so they can better ignore it.

Earwax blockages

Earwax isn’t harmful in and of itself. It’s necessary to clean dirt and debris from the ear and is a healthy and essential part of the ear. However, some people produce more earwax than others. If it is too much, it can build up into a partial or complete blockage that can affect your hearing.

Audiologists are trained to treat earwax impactions by cleaning them out, whether it’s by syringing it out, using long spoon-like tools to scoop it out, or by using irrigation kits to flush the wax out. Whichever method they use, it can be crucial in preventing issues like risk of infection or permanent hearing loss.

Balance and inner ear disorders

Your inner ear affects your ability to balance and disorders like vertigo or frequent dizziness can be helped with the expertise of an audiologist. An audiologist can run all manner of tests to diagnose the conditions and offer ways to treat them, such as head movement exercises or medication that may help lessen symptoms.

To learn more about any of the conditions above and just how your audiologist can help you with them, you should get in touch with the team at Physicians Hearing Center. You can visit any of the pages on the website to learn more or call us directly at (334) 441-4090.