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Published on: 4/21/2003
Last Visited: 4/21/2003
The most common cause of deafness in older adults is nerve damage, which is not reversible but can be substantially improved with hearing aids and sometimes surgery for severe cases, said Dr. Bevan Yueh, an ear specialist with a Seattle-area Veterans Affairs center and the University of Washington.
But reversible hearing loss also occurs in older adults, caused by common conditions including infections that can be treated.
Many patients and primary-care doctors are ill-informed about both types of hearing loss and consider it an untreatable effect of aging, Dr. Yueh said.
In a report in last week's Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Yueh and colleagues reviewed previous studies on methods to detect hearing loss and the effectiveness of treatments.
They said research indicates that hearing loss affects up to 40 percent of adults ages 65 and older.It is strongly linked to depression and decreased quality of life, but the researchers said fewer than 10 percent of internists offer routine testing to older patients.
Some types of hearing loss, including gradual nerve-related impairment, might not be obvious in a quiet doctor's examination room - and patients might not bring it up.
"Because it's so gradual, people say, 'It's OK, I'll get used to it.' In the meantime, they're getting depressed, losing all their friends and becoming socially isolated," Dr. Yueh said.