Hi guys!
These concepts must sound very elementary to y'all but I have tried to learn it so many times and still struggle with it. Can anyone give me tips in answering questions that ask what will weber or rinne test show?😳
1) Stick a finger in your ear and hum. What side do you hear the hum more loudly? Why? Because the finger in one ear is more dense than the air in the other. Sound travels better through something denser.
If you have crap in your ear, sounds will be louder in the ear with crap in it. That's what Weber's test determines--if an ear has crap in it (i.e. if the ear has
conductive hearing loss). Therefore, the side that's loudest must have either have conductive hearing loss (because it has crap in it)
or it must be working better than the other ear. How could it be working better than the other ear? Because the other ear has sensorineural hearing loss.
That's why Weber's localizes towards the side with conductive hearing loss and away from the side with sensorineural hearing loss.
2) The whole point of the conducting portion of your ear (everything but the nerves) is to let you better hear sound through air (because, as you know from above, air is generally a poor conductor of sound). So, if everything is working like it should with your conductive pathway, sound transmitted by air ("air conduction") should be heard better than sound transmitted through bone ("bone conduction"),
unless there's something wrong with the conducting portion of your ear.
Therefore, if you ever find that bone conduction is greater than air conduction--the opposite of normal--you know something's wrong with the conducting pathway, i.e. there's conductive hearing loss. On the other hand, if air conduction were greater than bone conduction, but the patient still had hearing loss, than you know the problem must be sensorineural. That's Rinne's test.
I hope this helps! It's not quick and easy, but hopefully it better explains the concepts behind the tests.
