Hearing & Balance Center

At NYU Langone’s Hearing and Balance Center, certified audiologists provide adults and children with a full range of audiologic testing, as well as hearing aid evaluation, fitting, and follow-up care. We also offer complete vestibular testing to diagnose inner ear conditions that may affect your balance. Patients are referred to us by otolaryngologists—ear, nose, and throat doctors—and by a wide range of other specialists, including doctors at NYU Langone Otolaryngology Associates.

Hearing Tests

Our experts provide compassionate care and a variety of assessments, including hearing evaluation and advanced audiologic testing for your family. An audiometric hearing test helps assess the level of hearing loss in adults and older children. During this testing, which takes 30 minutes, you sit in a soundproof booth wearing headphones that transmit a variety of sound levels and frequencies in each ear. Your audiologist asks you to respond by speaking or pressing a button when you hear a sound. Based on your replies, our doctors assess which type of hearing loss is causing your symptoms.

If your infant does not pass the universal newborn hearing screening, our audiologists may use an otoacoustic emissions test to look for objective responses from your child’s inner ear. During this test, which takes a few minutes, you hold your baby while an audiologist inserts a soft earphone in your child’s ear. It’s important that you and your infant remain still and quiet during the test.

Our audiologists may use an auditory brainstem response (ABR) test to measure the lowest level of sound your baby can hear. We use a soft earphone and place sticker electrodes on your child’s forehead and behind their ears, so please do not apply creams or oils to your baby’s head prior to the test. Your child should arrive awake but ready to sleep, and you may bring a pacifier or bottle to feed them if it helps keep them comfortable. During the test, which takes one to two hours to complete, you hold your child in a reclining chair.

Our specialists use the same ABR test to evaluate an adult’s cochlear nerve, and additional vestibular tests may also be used.

Children up to age 5 may be tested for hearing loss using visual reinforcement audiometry or conditioned play audiometry. Using interactive games, our audiologists are able to evaluate even the most active children.

Auditory processing evaluations are recommended for children who have normal hearing but significant difficulty processing sound when there is background noise. Your child’s teacher or pediatrician may refer your child if they have academic challenges and frequently ask for instructions to be repeated. This assessment can help diagnose auditory processing disorder, a condition that affects how your brain understands speech.

Hearing Aid Evaluation and Fitting

If you or your child has hearing loss, our experienced audiologists can help select the right hearing aid from a variety of major manufacturers and demonstrate how it works. We specialize in custom fitting hearing aids, and provide follow-up care to ensure that they are working properly. During fitting appointments, an audiologist inserts a probe microphone into the ear canal to precisely measure the sound and confirm patients receive the proper amplification level for their specific hearing loss. Our audiologists also provide information about assistive listening devices, which can help increase the sound of a telephone, television, or computer.

If you experience severe hearing loss in one ear, our skilled audiologists can help you choose the proper hearing amplifier. We provide a wide range of single-sided deafness devices. These include the contralateral routing of signals (CROS) system, which uses two hearing aids to transfer sound to your nonfunctional ear. We also offer a selection of bone-conduction hearing devices, including Baha®, Osia®, Ponto™, and ADHEAR. These devices work by transferring sounds directly to your cochlea, a hollow tube in your inner ear.

Vestibular Tests

Vertigo, the feeling that you are spinning even when you are still, is diagnosed by an otolaryngologist or neurologist. Our specialists use a physical exam, a review of your medical history, and hearing assessments and tests to assess your balance function. We use the following diagnostic vestibular tests:

• auditory brainstem response (ABR) test, which records how well sound travels from your inner ear to your brain stem and upper auditory area
• electrocochleography, to determine whether excess pressure in the inner ear is caused by fluid buildup
• rotatary chair testing, to assess your eye movement
• vestibular-evoked myogenic potentials testing, to measure the natural response of your neck muscles and vestibular system to certain sounds
• videonystagmography, visual and sensory tests to evaluate your inner ear function

Please consult your physician one week before your rotatary chair or videonystagmography test regarding food, medication, and alcohol restrictions. On the day of your test, please arrive in flat shoes and comfortable clothing, and do not wear any makeup or cream. Wear your contact lenses if you use them, but bring your case, solution, and glasses, as you may need to remove your contacts.

Comprehensive Treatment

Our highly trained audiologists consult with experts in otolaryngology and neurology to diagnose your condition once testing is complete. This patient-centered, multidisciplinary approach helps our team develop a personalized treatment program for different types of hearing loss and conditions, including the following:

• conductive hearing loss
• otosclerosis, a condition affecting the stapes bone in your middle ear
• sensorineural hearing loss
• tinnitus, or ringing in your ears
• vertigo

Audiologists at the Hearing and Balance Center collaborate with otolaryngologists to manage your care, including providing referrals for speech–language pathology services for adults and children at NYU Langone’s Rusk Rehabilitation, and any necessary educational support for your child.

Eligible children and adults with hearing impairments may choose to be evaluated at NYU Langone’s Cochlear Implant Center to determine suitability for a surgically placed hearing device. A cochlear implant bypasses damage in the inner ear to stimulate the auditory nerve and restore hearing. An auditory brainstem implant attaches directly to your brainstem and bypasses damaged auditory nerves to facilitate hearing.

Our doctors strive to advance their knowledge through research of conditions that affect the ear. We work to enhance our patients’ care through innovative methods of identifying causes for vertigo and loss of balance.