Treating hearing loss can greatly reduce risk of early death: Study

Monitoring Desk

CALIFORNIA: Adults who use hearing aids to treat hearing loss can reduce their risk of death by a large percentage, according to a new study.

Earlier this week, researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) published the findings in The Lancet Healthy Longevity journal.

“What we found was that there was a 24% lower risk of mortality for people who use hearing aids,” Dr. Janet Choi, an assistant professor of clinical otolaryngology-head and neck surgery with the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, and an otolaryngologist with Keck Medicine of USC, said in a statement, per CNN.

The study looked at data from 10,000 people, including more than 1,800 individuals who identified as having hearing loss.

Of those, a small group reported using aids at least once a week, as compared to a larger sum of individuals who reported never using such devices.

After studying mortality rates between 1999 and 2012, researchers found there was no difference between people who used hearing aids occasionally and those who never utilized them.

The study found, however, that users who regularly wore hearing aids had a significantly lower risk of death.

Hearing loss, according to the Mayo Clinic, affects more than half the people in the United States older than age 75.

Factors that lead to hearing loss can include damage to the inner ear and the buildup of earwax overtime, the medical organization adds.

Currently, about 30 million people ages 12 and older in the United States have hearing loss in both ears, the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders reported.

The organization adds that over 28 million adults across the nation could benefit from using hearing aids.

In addition, among adults ages 70 and older with hearing loss who could benefit from such, fewer than 30% have ever used them.

Similarly, approximately 16% of adults ages 20 to 69 who could benefit from the same have ever used hearing aids.