Photo credit: Flávia Costa licensed under CC BY 3.0
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
The Quiet Coalition received an email from contacts at the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is again looking at whether it should recommend screening for hearing loss. The last time it did this, USPSTF didn’t recommend screening for hearing loss in adults because no benefit had been shown from screening. The email reads:
Dear Hearing and Health Partners,
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has shared their Draft Research Plan for Hearing Loss in Older Adults: Screening on their website here. The draft plan also includes a graphic of a Proposed Analytic Framework and a Proposed Research Approach to identify the study characteristics and criteria that the Evidence-based Practice Center will use to search for publications for their evidence review.
According to the Task Force, The final Research Plan will be used to guide a systematic review of the evidence by researchers at an Evidence-based Practice Center. The resulting Evidence Review will form the basis of the Task Force Recommendation Statement on this topic. There is an opportunity for public comment on this draft until December 12, 2018. The draft research plan is available on the Task Force’s website here.
Cordially,
NCEH Noise-Induced Hearing Loss Program
There is important new research available that led to the USPSTF re-evaluating its recommendation. Several researchers have shown that most Americans get too much noise every day. The CDC reported that about 25% of American adults age 20-69 had noise-induced hearing loss, many without occupational noise exposure, and many thinking that their hearing was excellent.
Also, newer research shows that hearing loss is not a benign condition. It is correlated in stepwise fashion (i.e., more hearing loss, more problems) with social isolation, depression, falls, accidents, and dementia, all of which in turn are associated with increased mortality in older Americans.
And even more recent research shows that providing older people with hearing aids delays the onset of dementia, all of which compels the conclusion that doctors should absolutely screen their middle-aged and above patients for hearing loss.
If you have any thoughts about screening for hearing loss, send a comment to the USPSTF. I will!
