Testing: is OAE the way to go?

Inadequate hearing testing and lagging indicators may be allowing unnecessary injury to people’s hearing. Expert audiologist Rob Shepheard has worked studiously for decades in clinical audiology, and in-deep in areas such as sport and music where auditory injuries are far from rare. This respected consultant tells you that there is a quicker, easier, and more preventative way of testing hearing.   Audiology Worldnews (AWN) Your career has led you to a special focus on hearing testing, and you have penned several articles underlining that traditional audiometry testing with audiograms is carried out too late to help conserve hearing. You put forward otoacoustic emissions (OAE) testing as the best way to test. Please remind us why this is.   Rob Shepheard (RS): It depends on what we see the objective of hearing conservation programs to be and how health surveillance facilitates that objective,...