Prevalence of age-related hearing loss, including sex differences, in older adults in a large cohort study

Objectives/Hypothesis

To obtain actual status of age-related hearing loss in a general unscreened population of older Dutch adults and to investigate whether the prevalence or degree has changed over time.

Study Design

To investigate the prevalence and degree of hearing loss, we conducted a large prospective cohort study of older adults between February 2011 and July 2015.

Methods

Pure-tone air- and bone-conduction thresholds were measured for 4,743 participants. Results were compared to previous cohort studies.

Results

As expected, hearing loss increased with age. We found a correlation of R² = 0.317 for men and R² = 0.354 for women (right ears). A prevalence of hearing loss greater than 35 dB hearing level the average of 0.5/1/2/4 kHz in the better ear, was found in 33% of the male and almost 29% of the female participants aged 65 years and older. Compared with previous studies, men had less hearing loss at the frequencies of 2 kHz and above. Hearing thresholds in women were significantly higher at 4 and 8 kHz. The difference in hearing loss between men and women is significantly less than in earlier studies.

Conclusions

Our study confirms that hearing loss is highly prevalent in the general unscreened population of older adults. However, the difference in hearing between sexes was considerably less than previously reported. This is probably due to changing lifestyle and environmental circumstances,

Level of Evidence

2b Laryngoscope, 2016

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