Aural rehabilitation in the elderly: supply of hearing aids related to measured need and self-assessed hearing problems.

Three age cohorts of elderly persons in Göteborg (70, 75 and 88 years of age) were studied regarding hearing aid (HA) rehabilitation, on the one hand, and measured and self-assessed hearing, on the other. The participants, 615 in number, were representative of their ages and were selected from a geriatric population study. At age 70, 12% of the participants had been equipped with HAs. At age 75, the corresponding figure was 14% and at age 88, 32%. The correlations between self-assessed and audiometrically measured hearing were reasonably high (r = 0.5-0.7). According to the result for the self-assessed measure, we estimate that elderly persons with pure-tone averages (PTAs) at 30 dB HL (0.5-4 kHz, better ear) are in need of aural rehabilitation. Nevertheless, few subjects with PTAs between 30 and 49 dB HL have been equipped with HAs. At age 88, almost 20% of those with pronounced problems had no HA. Very few participants with no documented hearing problems for aural rehabilitation had been equipped with HAs.