DESCRIBE HOW AIR-CONDUCTION TESTING DIFFERENT FROM BONE-CONDUCTION TESTING?

Air conduction testing

The air-conduction tests the entire ear system, the signal from the headphone need to be processed along the outer ear, middle, inner ear and auditory nerve pathway. Thus, all this parts need to be work  normally in order to make air conduction threshold to be normal. If something happen to one of this conduction system it will cause the air conduction threshold to be poor. Thus the air conduction testing is considered to test for both conduction and sensorineural mechanism. Meaning that the air conduction test the whole ear system.

Bone conduction testing

The bone-conduction tests only stimulate the cochlea and above. The signal by the bone conductor will directly stimulates the cochlea and bypassing the outer and middle ear system. Hence, bone conduction testing is considered to test only sensorineural mechanism.

As a deduction

The difference between the air and bone conduction is very important for audiologist to diagnose the type of hearing loss whether it considered to be normal, conductive, sensorineural or mixed hearing loss based on the air-bone gap (AB gap) after masking if needed.