Results from the test should be interpreted with caution. The Shwabach test is rarely used to identify hearing loss due to the wide availability of clinical audiometers. Finally, the patient could have a sensorineural hearing loss if he or she hears the tone for a shorter time period than the examiner. Second, the patient could hear the tone longer than the examiner indicating a conductive hearing loss. First, the patient could have normal hearing by bone conduction. There are three basic outcomes to the test, assuming the examiner has normal hearing. If the tone decays at a rate of 5dB per second and the clinician has perceived the tone for 6 seconds longer than the patient, it can be determined that the patient has a 30dB HL hearing loss, assuming that the audiometric thresholds for the clinician are at 0 dB HL. To correlate the findings of this test with the pure-tone audiogram, the clinician must know the decay rate of the tuning fork in use. If the tone is still present, the clinician determines how long he or she perceives the tone beyond that of the patient. The clinician then places the fork on his or her own mastoid process to determine the presence of the tone. The patient informs the clinician when the tone is no longer heard. The tuning fork is struck and placed on the mastoid of the patient. The frequency of the tuning fork used for this test is chosen based on the frequency at which hearing loss is suspected. The Schwabach Test is a technique for estimating a patient's hearing sensitivity by bone-conduction.

Weber tuning fork used for