Special Tests - An overview

In addition to pure-tone, speech, and supra-threshold tests, most clinical audiometers provide a set of special tests. These procedures are not part of the standard diagnostic routine but can offer valuable information in specific clinical situations.

Special tests are particularly useful to:

• Differentiate between organic and non-organic hearing loss;
• Assess central auditory processing or binaural interaction;
• Support the fitting and fine-tuning of hearing aids.

Among the most widely used special tests are:

• Masking Level Difference (MLD), designed to investigate binaural processing abilities;
• Stenger Test, applied mainly to detect non-organic hearing loss;
• Master Hearing Aid (MHA), which simulates the behavior of a hearing aid and helps in evaluating the benefit of amplification before fitting.

Each of these tests has its own dedicated procedure and clinical application, which will be described in the Product Insight.