Photo credit: Andrea Piacquadio
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
An article in JAMA Open Network from a research group at Johns Hopkins University reports that hearing aid use among the elderly has increased, but remains low. The data were collected as part of the National Health & Aging Study, a longitudinal study of an annual cohort study of Americans over the age of 65, refreshed to maintain national representativeness.
Overall, hearing aid use increased from 11.2% in 2011 to 16.3% in 2022. There were differences reported depending on income — not surprisingly, wealthier individuals had greater hearing aid use — and between those living in metropolitan versus non-metropolitan counties.
Hearing loss is common in older Americans, with about half of those over age 65 having moderate or severe hearing loss. Among those with hearing loss, a study from the same research group based on the same data base found that about 30% of those with hearing loss used hearing aids.
I am glad that hearing aid use has increased among older Americans, although it remains too low. Hearing loss is associated with social isolation, depression and dementia. Research is under way to see if providing hearing aids to older people with hearing loss prevents or at least delays the onset of dementia. So far, preliminary reports support this hypothesis.
My interest is in prevention of hearing loss, not in treatment. The only currently available treatments for hearing loss are hearing aids and cochlear implants for the profoundly hearing impaired. Neither treatment restores normal hearing. Evidence suggests that hearing loss is not part of normal physiological aging, but rather largely represents noise-induced hearing loss. Noise-induced hearing loss is the only type of hearing loss that is 100% preventable.
Prevention of noise induced hearing loss is simple and inexpensive. If something sounds loud, it’s too loud and one’s auditory health is at risk. Turn down the volume, insert earplugs or other hearing protection, or leave the noisy environment and one’s ears should last an entire lifetime. If enough people turn down the volume in their lives, maybe future studies will show a declining prevalence of hearing loss in older people. I sure hope so.
