How often should you have a hearing test?
All adults should have their hearing tested at least once every five years, according to the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP).
But 2012 ODPHP data show that only about 21 percent of adults between 20 and 69 had a hearing test in the previous five years. And just over 40 percent of adults 70 and older, who are much more likely to have a hearing problem, had a hearing test within the recommended time.
As part of its Healthy People 2020 initiative, the ODPHP hopes to improve these numbers by the year 2020. The goal is a 10 percent improvement for all adults. But even that increase would mean most adults still wouldn’t receive regular screening. We clearly have a lot of work to do to get the word out about the importance of regular hearing tests.
Why do you need regular hearing tests?
Just like we do for blood pressure, it’s helpful for your doctor to have a regular reading of your hearing function. Regular hearing tests help us establish your baseline, or normal, hearing level. That way, if you notice a change in your ability to hear, or if we start to see a change from one test to the next, we can identify how abnormal your hearing function is and when the change likely happened.
If you wait until there’s an issue to have a hearing test, it’s harder to determine the problem. The doctor will have just the current exam to work from. One test won’t help us determine just how much your hearing has changed and when. A problem you may think appeared out of nowhere might have been developing for many years before you noticed.
Different types of hearing loss have very different management and treatment strategies. In some cases, we can correct hearing problems with surgery. In others, we can’t correct the disorder itself, but we can improve hearing ability with the use of hearing aids. The more time we lose trying to find the cause of hearing loss, the more hearing you could lose.
