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Eli's pearls
ELSEVIER
Resident’s Corner
ELI’S
PEARLS
Q: A patient complains of deafness in one ear. You do not have a tuning fork to perform a Weber or Rinne test. Can you still determine clinically, without any special diagnostic tests, whether the deafness is of conduction or sensori-neural origin? A: The “humming test” described by J. L. Brown [l] may provide the answer. The subject is asked to produce a monotone “mmmm” sound slightly softer than casual conversation. If heard louder in the affected ear, conduction deafness is the
most likely cause. The reader may wish to perform the test by humming softly and then closing one external meatus with a finger or folding the tragus forward. This test is as significant as the Weber. Eli Tobias,
M.D.
Chicago, Illinois REFERENCE
1. Brown JL. Humming test for conductive hearing loss [letter]. Lancet 1995;356:128.
0090-3019/97/$17.00 655 Avenue
0 1997 by Elsevier Science Inc. of the Americas, New York, NY 10010
Resident’s Corner
ELI’S
PEARLS
Q: A patient complains of deafness in one ear. You do not have a tuning fork to perform a Weber or Rinne test. Can you still determine clinically, without any special diagnostic tests, whether the deafness is of conduction or sensori-neural origin? A: The “humming test” described by J. L. Brown [l] may provide the answer. The subject is asked to produce a monotone “mmmm” sound slightly softer than casual conversation. If heard louder in the affected ear, conduction deafness is the
most likely cause. The reader may wish to perform the test by humming softly and then closing one external meatus with a finger or folding the tragus forward. This test is as significant as the Weber. Eli Tobias,
M.D.
Chicago, Illinois REFERENCE
1. Brown JL. Humming test for conductive hearing loss [letter]. Lancet 1995;356:128.
0090-3019/97/$17.00 655 Avenue
0 1997 by Elsevier Science Inc. of the Americas, New York, NY 10010