Seniors susceptible to hearing loss
Hearing loss comes in many forms, but one of the most common forms is presbycusis — gradual hearing loss that develops with age.
According to a 2023 study from the Journal of the American Medical Association, an estimated 65.3% of adults 71 years and older report at least some degree of hearing loss, which increases to 96.2% for adults 90 years and older.
Ken Johnson, a hearing aid specialist at R.W. Petruso Hearing & Audiology Center in Cranberry Township, says that the inner ear is prone to deteriorating with age.
“Typically, as we get older, the hair cells in the inner ear begin to break down,” Johnson said. “Those hairs convert sound wave energy into electrical signals, which are then transferred to the brain. When those hairs break down in the inner ear, we tend to lose those higher frequencies first.”
While there are many different causes for hearing loss, all of them can be divided into three basic types: conductive, sensorineural or a mix of the two.
Presbycusis is a sensorineural form hearing loss, which means the root cause is damage to the inner ear. Conductive hearing loss happens as a result of physical damage to the outer ear, such as earwax blockage or swimmer’s ear.
However, the seeds for hearing loss can be planted earlier in life.
Audiologist Dr. Robert Petruso said that exposure to loud environments, such as noisy workplaces; listening to music through headphones; or sudden loud noises, such as gunshots, can also contribute to hearing loss in later years.
A 2020 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that somewhere between 12.8% and 17.5% of U.S. adolescents between 12 and 19 years old showed signs of measurable noise-induced hearing loss.
Petruso said that long-term hearing loss in these situations can be prevented by wearing hearing protection in noisy environments when possible, simply turning the music down when wearing headphones or avoiding them altogether.
“Right now, ear-worn devices are causing hearing loss in the youth,” Petruso said. “A fairly alarming percentage are starting to develop hearing loss already because of ear-level music devices.”
Petruso said, aside from obvious cases such as earwax blockage, there is no easy way to tell just by sight whether someone is suffering from hearing loss.
“Looking in the ear is not going to tell you if a person has hearing loss,” Petruso said. “What's going to tell you is an actual, full-blown hearing test … an audiology workup that is going to determine at what frequencies and to what degree the person has hearing difficulty.”
There’s never not a good time to get your hearing checked, even when your hearing may be close to perfect. However, there may be some outward signs that you, or someone close to you, may need to get a hearing test as soon as possible.
“If their family members tell them that they are not hearing correctly, then that’s not a good sign,” audiologist Evelyn Wiest said. “If they’re turning their TVs up, if they can't understand certain words that sound similar, if they think people are mumbling.”
For seniors experiencing hearing loss, acquiring a hearing aid may be the only option, although it won’t repair the damage which aging has already done to the inner ear.
“In simplest terms, (hearing aids) are amplifying certain frequencies more than others, because everybody's hearing loss is different,” said William Yost, hearing instrument specialist at HearingLife in Butler. “A hearing aid will manipulate the sounds that they have trouble hearing and make them audible.”
In most cases — and until very recently, in all cases — hearing aids are distributed by prescription from a licensed audiologist or hearing instrument specialist after a thorough hearing assessment.
“I test them, I determine the amount of hearing loss, I try to take everything into account, and then I will put hearing aids on them if they need them,” Yost said.
But not all hearing aids are made equal. In October 2022, the Food and Drug Administration approved a category of over-the-counter hearing aids for people 18 years and older, available to be purchased at retailers with no prescription necessary.
Wiest does not recommend using over-the-counter hearing aids for any purpose until undergoing a formal hearing test.
“Most audiologists can determine whether that over-the-counter product is going to be appropriate for you, because it may not be,” Wiest said. “They’re limited in technology and they're limited in their gain capacity. Anything above something very normal to mild is not going to be appropriately fitted with an over-the-counter product.”
