A tympanometry test is used to tell us how well the eardrum is moving. We do this test on anyone that we suspect may be having a problem with the middle ear, which is located behind the eardrum. What you see in this video is a normal response. We put pressure on the ear drum and it moved showing the peak on the screen. The peak is also at zero so that tells us that the pressure behind the ear drum is the same as in the room, which is what we want. If the pressure is different, such as when someone feels that their ears need to “pop”, the peak will occur to the left of the zero on the graph. This means that the person may be having an issue with their sinuses because the pressure is different behind the ear drum. There are tubes that run from our middle ear to the sinuses that pop open to keep the pressure the same in the middle ear as it is on the outside. If the response is just a flat line, it means that the ear drum was already under pressure so we couldn’t make it move. This happens when there is fluid behind the ear drum. This is really common in kids. The middle ear produces the fluid to protect itself, typically because pressure is building up because those tubes running to the sinuses are not “popping” open. The fluid can then become infected causing an ear infection. Fluid in the middle ear will cause hearing loss until the issue is resolved.
