Symptoms: At the Doctor’s Office
When visiting your doctor to have conditions affecting you ear examined, the diagnostic procedures used to check your ear and hearing follow a process that is intended to gather as much information as possible to make an accurate diagnosis. This process will take into consideration your symptoms, answers to specific questions and include some or all of the following steps:
- review of your medical history
- a physical examination of the ear, nose and throat
- examination using an otoscope to check for redness or fluid and to check the movement of the eardrum
- blood tests, if necessary
- an audiogram can be given to test responses to tones of various pitches to determine if there is any hearing loss
- a tympanogram can be given to measure air pressure in the middle ear to see how well the eustachian tube is working and how well the eardrum can move
- Ct-scan or MRI possible