HEARING IN THE ELDERLY GREATER-THAN-OR-EQUAL-TO-80 YEARS OF AGE - PREVALENCE OF PROBLEMS AND SENSITIVITY

This article is part of an epidemiological study on hearing in an urba n population greater than or equal to 80 years of age, and concentrate s on the prevalence of hearing problems and hearing sensitivity as a f unction of age and gender. Prior to the study, 2915 residents aged 80 from the Valby area in Copenhagen were selected for investigation and subdivided into two groups. The first group, comprising n = 859 subje cts previously provided with HA, and the second group, resulting from an invitation mailed to n = 565 subjects, were matched according to th e age and gender distribution of the population, i.e. 24% males and 76 % females. Among these, only 41% at a median age of 84 years, range 80 -96, accepted the invitation, being significantly younger than the non -attenders. The estimated prevalence of self-reported hearing problems ranged between 33 and 66%, increasing with increasing age. Significan t differences were found in the hearing sensitivity as a function of g ender, i.e. the hearing in the low-frequency area < 1 kHz is better, w hereas the hearing sensitivity at > 2 kHz is significantly worse in ma les compared with females. The speech recognition score (SRS) was sign ificantly higher in females compared with males, and a comparison betw een ears supports the finding that the right ear speech recognition sc ore is better than the left. The study demonstrates the difficulties i n obtaining reliable epidemiological data on the hearing in the elderl y greater than or equal to 80 years, which represents an obstacle for the planning of appropriate hearing health services directed towards t his age group, and collaborative studies are suggested in order to acc umulate more knowledge.