Hearing Rehabilitation for Older Adults: An Update on Hearing Aids, Hearing Assistive Technologies, and Rehabilitation Services
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Hearing Rehabilitation for Older Adults: An Update on Hearing Aids, Hearing Assistive Technologies, and Rehabilitation Services Mary Beth Jennings, PhD, Reg. CASLPO, Aud(C), FAAA, Audiologist, Assistant Professor, National Centre for Audiology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Western Ontario, London, ON. Frances Richert, MSc, Reg. CASLPO, Audiologist, H.A. Leeper Speech and Hearing Clinic, School of Communication Sciences and Disorders; National Centre for Audiology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Western Ontario, London, ON. TECHNOLOGY IN MEDICINE A Rehabilitative Approach to Hearing Loss in Aging Persons over the age of 65 years are the fastest-growing age group in Canada. The number of adults in this age bracket is expected to grow from 3.5 million in 1996 to an estimated 6.9 million by the year 2021.1 Older Canadians are working later in life than ever before, and good communication is essential to their continued involvement in the workplace and the wider social sphere.2,3 Hearing loss is one of the most common chronic disabilities for older adults, and the prevalence of hearing loss increases with age.4 Based on self-report, 41.1% of adults over the age of 65 who are not institutionalized have hearing loss.5 The typical hearing loss for older adults is permanent and involves a gradual decrease in hearing sensitivity for higher frequencies.6 In suboptimal listening conditions of noise interference, even persons with only mild hearing losses will have difficulty understanding speech.7 An acquired sensorineural hearing loss affects speech understanding, and has significant social and psychological implications.4,8,9 Only 27% of persons of all ages in Canada who report having a hearing loss also report using hearing aids.10 In the past, stigma attached to hearing loss was a main reason for not purchasing a hearing instrument.11,12 Current reasons for not using hearing instruments include the costs outweighing the perceived benefits, the amplification of noise, a lack of physical comfort, performance problems, and difficulty with adjusting or handling the instrument.13,14 Benefits of using hearing aids include improved relationships within the family and greater independence and security, but even those who wear hearing aids on a consistent basis may still have socially disabling levels of communicative difficulty.4,15,16 Comprehensive postfitting rehabilitation programs that are designed specifically for this population can support successful adaptation to the use of hearing assistive technologies.17,18,19 Older adults today are more technologically savvy than ever before. As such, they are more comfortable with the use of technology and may be less intimidated by the use of hearing aids or other hearing assistive technologies (HATS). Older adults are most receptive to the use of technology when there is a high level of concern for the problem that can be alleviated through the use of technology, when there is social support for using technology, and when technology is geared toward enhancing quality of life.20 Today’s older adults use computers to Older adults are the fastest-growing age group in Canada. Hearing loss is highly prevalent among this population. Of those persons who would benefit from the use of hearing aids, only a small number actually own and use them. Digital hearing aids now constitute the majority of hearing aids on the market. Technological advances in hearing aids and hearing assistive technologies have expanded the range of options available to improve the success of device use. Matching the needs and optimizing performance of older adults with the broad range of devices available requires appropriate assessment, selection, verification, and follow-up by the audiologist.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".