Hearing loss in the elderly: a 17-year longitudinal study.

A 5-year longitudinal study into hearing levels of 261 randomly selected elderly people was performed between 1968 and 1973. From 47 survivors, 37 subjects have been traced and their hearing retested with pure tone audiometry. The age range of those followed up was 80-85 years. The results indicate that the rate of hearing loss found after 5 years remained the same over the next 12 years. The deterioration rate is very much greater for the higher frequencies with losses of 1.89 dB annually at 6 KHz compared with 0.35 dB per annum for 1 KHz. The findings confirm that hearing loss continues steadily into the ninth decade, information previously not established.