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Clinical Summary

Hearing aids may delay or prevent dementia, depression, falls

Takeaway

  • Among older adults with hearing loss covered by private managed care insurance, those who used hearing aids had lower risks for several age-related adverse health outcomes.

Why this matters

Key results

  • Prevalence of hearing aid use:
    • Lower among women vs men (11.3% vs 13.3%; P<.0001).
    • Higher among whites (13.6%) vs blacks (9.8%) vs Asians (8.3%) vs Hispanics (6.5%) (P<.0001).
  • Relative to nonusers, hearing aid users had lower 3-year adjusted risks for:
    • Alzheimer’s disease or dementia (HR, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.76-0.89).
    • Anxiety or depression (HR, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.86-0.93).
    • Injurious falls (HR, 0.87; 95% CI, 0.80-0.95).

Study design

  • Retrospective cohort study using 2008-2016 national longitudinal claims data from a large private payer for 114,862 adults aged ≥66 years with hearing loss.
  • Main outcomes: diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease/dementia, anxiety/depression, injurious falls within 3 years of hearing loss diagnosis.
  • Funding: National Institutes of Health; University of Michigan Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center.

Limitations

  • Reliance on claims data.
  • Unmeasured, residual confounding.
  • Frequency, duration of hearing aid use unknown.
  • Generalizability unclear.

References


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