Ageing and Hearing

A common complaint of older adults is difficulty hearing and understanding speech, which can result in problems following conversations, using the telephone, and detecting and locating alerting sounds. Approximately one third of adults ages 65 to 74 and nearly one half of adults 75 and older have impaired hearing. When loss of hearing for higher frequency sounds is included, nearly all individuals older than 80 have significant hearing loss. Indeed, hearing loss is among the most common chronic conditions of ageing, ranking first among men and fourth among women, after arthritis, cardiovascular disease, and cataracts. In the next few decades, the number of individuals with hearing loss will substantially increase as the population ages, as this entry describes.

Hearing loss in older adults is known as ...