The Effect of the Use of Hearing Aids in Elders: Perspectives.

Daniele Monzani,Elisabetta Genovese,Silvia Palma,Riccardo Nocini,Gian Maria Galeazzi,Silvia Ferrari,Gaia Federici,Federica Di Berardino,Chiara Gherpelli,Maria Teresa Presutti

doi:10.3390/audiolres12020017

Abstract

Older adults with hearing loss have difficulties during conversation with others because an elevated auditory threshold reduces speech intelligibility, especially in noisy environments. Listening and comprehension often become exhausting tasks for hearing-impaired elders, resulting in social isolation and depression. The aim of the present study was to investigate the advantages of hearing aid use in relation to relief from listening-related fatigue, which is still controversial. Participants included a sample of 49 hearing-impaired elders affected by presbycusis for whom hearing aids were prescribed. The Modified Fatigue Impact Scale was used to assess cognitive, physical and psychosocial fatigue. The vitality subscale of the Short Form Health Survey 36 and a single item of the multi-dimensional Speech, Spatial and Quality Hearing Scale (“Do you have to put a lot of effort to hear what is being said in conversation with others?”) were also used. The Cognitive Failures Questionnaire was used to investigate daily errors related to lack of memory and reduced mindedness. Hearing aids rehabilitation resulted in improved speech intelligibility in competing noise, and a significant reduction in cognitive and psychosocial fatigue and listening effort in conversation. Vitality was also improved and a significant reduction in the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire scores was observed. Findings from the study indicate that the use of hearing aids in older impaired-listeners provide them not only with an increased auditory function but also with a reduction in listening-related fatigue and mindedness.

Highlights

Fatigue is very common in older people and interferes with daily activities, worsening their quality of life
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It has been established that hearing aid use improves adults’ hearing-related quality of life by reducing the psychological, social, and emotional effects of hearing impairment [22] and, in addition, a large epidemiological, cross-sectional survey showed that older subjects with hearing aids reported much less fatigue in communication with others than those who did not wear them [21]

Summary

Introduction

Fatigue is very common in older people and interferes with daily activities, worsening their quality of life. For subjects with hearing impairment, the sensory loss results in a degradation of the quality of peripheral signals, which results in the requirement of increased cognitive resources to recognize relevant information from the speech stream, analyze context and recall prior phonological knowledge [6–9]. This shift from mostly bottom-up (signal-based) to mostly top-down (knowledge-based) auditory processing may increase the exertion of mental energy and is considered a result of both ageing and hearing loss [10,11]. Most studies evaluated listening effort and mental fatigue after a single session of speech perception under different laboratory conditions [14–16]. Results of experiments on the effectiveness of hearing aids in reducing listening effort and mental fatigue were limited to the duration of the tests [17,18]

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