Hearing & Balance Center

At NYU Langone’s Hearing and Balance Center, audiologists provide children and adults with a full range of audiologic testing, as well as hearing aid evaluation, fitting, and follow-up care.

We also offer adults and children vestibular testing to diagnose inner ear conditions affecting balance. Children with vestibular and balance disorders receive treatment through Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone.

Our Team-Based Approach

Our audiologists collaborate with otolaryngologists—ear, nose, and throat doctors—as well as providers at NYU Langone Otolaryngology Associates, neurologists, and pediatric specialists to provide compassionate, team-based care. We diagnose and create personalized treatment plans for the following conditions:

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

Eligible children and adults with hearing impairments may choose to be evaluated by providers at NYU Langone’s Cochlear Implant Center to determine suitability for a surgically placed cochlear implant or an auditory brainstem implant.
 
Care may also involve referrals for speech–language pathology services for adults and children at NYU Langone’s Rusk Rehabilitation, and any necessary educational support for your child.

Hearing Tests

Our experts perform a variety of hearing assessments, including audiometric hearing tests to evaluate the level of hearing loss in adults and older children. These tests occur in a soundproof booth, while you wear headphones that transmit various sounds to each ear. Your ability to detect these sounds help our doctors to determine which type of hearing loss is causing your symptoms.

Specialized Care for Children

We provide hearing assessments and treatment plans for children of all ages.

If your infant does not pass universal newborn hearing screening, our audiologists provide additional screening and care. We may perform an otoacoustic emissions test to assess how well your baby’s inner ear works. Our audiologist may also use an auditory brainstem response (ABR) test. This test records how well sound travels from the inner ear to the brainstem and upper auditory area, to measure the lowest level of sound your baby can hear.

We also provide child-friendly audiometric hearing tests. These assessments may include visual reinforcement, conditioned play, or interactive games, which help our audiologists evaluate even the most active kids.

Auditory processing evaluations are recommended for children who have normal hearing but difficulty processing sound when there is background noise. This assessment can help diagnose an auditory processing disorder, which makes it harder for the brain to understand speech.

We also work with members of the speech and hearing services team at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone to assess children who have speech delays and to rule out whether hearing loss may be the cause. In addition, we create treatment plans for children who have frequent middle ear infections associated with hearing loss.

Hearing Aid Evaluation and Fitting

If you or your child has hearing loss, our experienced audiologists can help select the right hearing aid 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 that you receive the proper amplification level for your specific hearing loss. Our audiologists also provide information about assistive listening devices, which increase the sound of a telephone, television, or computer.

If you experience severe hearing loss in one ear, our 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, which work by transferring sounds directly to your cochlea, a hollow tube in your inner ear.