The diagnosis of children's hearing includes objective hearing examination and subjective hearing examination. Objective Hearing examination includes external auditory canal examination, middle ear examination, inner ear examination and auditory nerve examination.
The external ear examination has an electric otoscope examination, that is, to check whether there is earwax or secretion in the external auditory canal and whether there is inflammation in the eardrum. Middle ear examination is called acoustic immittance examination. Diagnostic otoacoustic emission is used to check the function of outer hair cells in inner ear.
The examination of auditory brainstem response includes airway auditory brainstem response and tympanic canal auditory brainstem response. These tests are to check the function of auditory nerve and belong to objective hearing test. Subjective listening test is conducted in the environment of sound transmission, and children's response to sound is observed through behavior.
There are also visual reinforcement audiometry and game audiometry, which belong to objective audiometry. Objective hearing examination is the gold standard of hearing diagnosis.