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Hearing Loss/Presbycusis
Published in Charles Theisler, Adjuvant Medical Care, 2023
Presbycusis is the bilateral and symmetrical cumulative gradual hearing loss from inner ear damage occurring as a result of age or regular exposure to loud sounds, illness, and genetics. It usually occurs after the age of 50. Initially, changes in the inner ear, such as degeneration of hair cells and changes in the basilar membrane, lead to decreased hearing at higher tones and a decline in pitch discrimination. Sounds gradually become muffled, distorted, or obscured by background noises. As hearing continues to be lost, lower pitch tones also become harder to hear.1
Communication in the context of older age
Published in Rebecca Allwood, Working with Communication and Swallowing Difficulties in Older Adults, 2022
Presbyacusis refers to the normal loss of hearing that is associated with ageing. This is a sensorineural hearing loss and occurs along a spectrum of severity but can lead to complete functional bilateral hearing loss. There are multiple factors involved in the severity of the hearing loss, including genetic predisposition and amount of exposure to very loud noise.
Ear, Nose and Throat
Published in Kristen Davies, Shadaba Ahmed, Core Conditions for Medical and Surgical Finals, 2020
Presbyacusis: The most common cause in adults. Patients usually >65 years of age with progressive hearing loss ± tinnitus. Thought to be due to the loss of hair cells around the base of the cochlea that can be damaged in older age.
Theory of Mind and its relation to presbycusis. A pilot study
Published in Speech, Language and Hearing, 2023
Jesús Valero-García, Ledicia Iglesias, Núria Silvestre
An additional factor associated with aging, and one that might also have a role in cognitive decline, is presbycusis. This term is used to describe bilateral, progressive and irreversible hearing loss that occurs as part of the aging process without any single defined origin. Presbycusis is characterized by hearing problems affecting higher-pitched auditory frequencies (>25 dB in both ears) (Gates & Mills, 2005). Indeed, researchers have confirmed that if presbycusis is not properly treated it can affect, directly or indirectly, ToM abilities (Amieva, Ouvrard, Meillon, Rullier, & Dartigues, 2018). Despite its prevalence among adults over 65 (WHO, 2018b), this issue has been met with a poor response from the healthcare community and attracted little interest from researchers examining ToM in older people. It must be noted that in the healthcare field presbycusis tends to be underdiagnosed, meaning that older adults with mild hearing loss are often unaware they are suffering from it (Valero-Garcia & Vila Rovira, 2018). This underdiagnosis might hinder the adoption of hearing aids, which when carried out correctly can help improve patients’ quality of life (e.g. Chisolm et al., 2007; Manrique-Huarte, Calavia, Huarte, Girón, & Manrique-Rodríguez, 2016; Timmer, Hickson, & Launer, 2015).
Evaluation of age-related changes in middle-ear structures by wideband tympanometry
Published in Acta Oto-Laryngologica, 2022
Doğukan Özdemir, Dursun Mehmet Mehel, Ayşe Bel Çeçen, Şule Özdemir, Ömer Küçüköner, Abdulkadir Özgür
Age‐related hearing loss (ARHL) is the most frequent cause of sensorineural hearing loss in adults. Presbycusis is defined as symmetrical bilateral hearing loss associated with progressive degeneration of cochlear structures and central auditory pathways due to aging [1]. Presbycusis initially affects high-frequency sounds, leading to poor speech recognition. Numerous environmental and genetic factors are considered to play a role in the age of onset, progression, and pathophysiology of the disease [2]. Presbycusis has been documented to affect 37% of adults between the ages of 61–70, and 80% of those age 85 and over [3]. It has been reported that approximately 75% of the American population >70 years of age is affected by ARHL; moreover, the prevalence of ARHL is projected to increase as the world’s population ages [4].
Hearing loss after bacterial meningitis, a retrospective study
Published in Acta Oto-Laryngologica, 2022
Filip Persson, Nora Bjar, Ann Hermansson, Marie Gisselsson-Solen
A consistent finding in this study was that age increased the risk of developing hearing loss. Age >70 years has previously been associated with an ‘unfavourable outcome’ [10], Since most patients in this study had not tested their hearing prior to their meningitis, the finding might, at least partly, be explained by the fact that the prevalence of hearing loss increases with age. Some patients might therefore have had previously undiagnosed presbyacusis, an assumption further supported by the large number of patients with high frequency hearing loss in the two older age groups. Undiagnosed presbyacusis should also have been present in some patients with missing hearing tests, where we assumed normal hearing, which should somewhat counteract any such overestimation and might explain why the effect sizes were not as great in analysis B as in analysis A. Missing audiometries were not less common among the older age group (data not shown).