Why intervene in presbycusis as early as possible?

58.85% of the population over 60 years old in my country suffers from hearing loss, of which the elderly make up the majority. In noisy environments, the elderly have obvious difficulties in speech recognition, especially in understanding speech at fast or normal speeds.

Why intervene in presbycusis as early as possible?

Because as the age increases, the various functions of the elderly body If hearing loss occurs, detect it as early as possible and intervene as soon as possible. If you do not intervene or intervene too late, the effect of wearing a hearing aid will not be very good.

Elderly people with severe hearing loss need to wear Hearing Aids. One thing must be made clear: hearing aids for people with hearing loss are just like glasses for myopia. It is a result of social civilization and progress, and there is no need to have any doubts.

When using hearing aids, you need to pay attention to the following issues:

(1) It is necessary to undergo detailed examination by an otologist and audiologist, and choose the appropriate hearing aid based on the audiogram curve. Do not just buy one on the street. Just like wearing glasses without optometry will damage your vision, using hearing aids without computer selection will also affect your residual hearing.

(2) Single-sided deafness or mild deafness generally does not require wearing hearing aids.

(3) People with hearing loss of 35 to 85 decibels are recommended to use hearing aids. Among them, those with hearing loss of about 60 decibels have the best effect.

(4) For those whose hearing loss is greater than 85 decibels, although the hearing aid can increase the volume, it has no practical value due to its low language recognition rate.

(5) For bilateral deafness, if the hearing in both ears is roughly the same, the hearing aids can be worn alternately. If the hearing loss does not exceed 85 decibels, it should be worn on the side with poor hearing; if the hearing loss in one ear exceeds 85 decibels, it should be worn on the side with better hearing.

(6) There is an adaptation process to using hearing aids, which usually takes 1 to 2 months. In addition, hearing aids work better when used indoors, but when used in public places and noisy environments, the effect is not good because the noise will also be amplified at the same time. Due to the particularity of presbycusis and the inevitability of nervous system degeneration in the elderly, hearing aids sometimes do not achieve good results.

If the family's financial conditions permit, you can consider installing an electronic cochlear (cochlear implant) to improve the hearing condition of elderly deaf patients. Cochlear electronics can significantly improve the speech resolution of elderly people with hearing loss greater than 85 decibels or even total deafness, greatly improving the quality of life of the elderly. However, due to the high price of cochlear electronics, it cannot be used as a routine treatment method in China.

In short, if the elderly have hearing loss, they must choose hearing aids as early as possible, because as they age, the elderly not only It is the decline of hearing, and the speech recognition ability will also decrease. If the selection is too late, the speech ability will decrease too much. After wearing the hearing aid, there will be a phenomenon where you can only hear the sound but not know what to say.