HEARING LOSS DOMINO EFFECT

Link to dementia & heart failure

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TWO important new studies link hearing loss with heart failure and dementia, highlighting the importance of diagnosing and treating the condition that affects around 64 million people worldwide.

In the first study, U.K. researchers found that hearing loss may be a contributing factor to heart failure because of its association with social isolation, psychological distress and poor circulation.

They tracked 164,431 people with an average age of 56. Their hearing ability was measured using the validated Digit Triplets Test — which measures how well they could understand speech in noisy environments — and their speech-reception threshold, the softest level at which they could understand at least 50 percent of spoken words.