Prevalence of age-related hearing loss, including sex differences, in older adults in a large cohort study

Objectives/Hypothesis: To obtain actual status of age-related hearing loss in a general unscreened population of older Dutch adults and to investigate whether the prevalence or degree has changed over time.
Study Design: To investigate the prevalence and degree of hearing loss, we conducted a large prospective cohort study of older adults between February 2011 and July 2015. Methods: Pure-tone air- and bone-conduction thresholds were measured for 4,743 participants.
Results were compared to previous cohort studies. Results: As expected, hearing loss increased with age. We found a correlation of R2 = 0.317 for men and R2 = 0.354 for women (right ears). A prevalence of hearing loss greater than 35 dB hearing level the average of 0.5/1/2/4 kHz in the better ear, was found in 33% of the male and almost 29% of the female participants aged 65 years and older. Compared with previous studies, men had less hearing loss at the frequencies of 2 kHz and above. Hearing thresholds in women were significantly higher at 4 and 8 kHz. The difference in hearing loss between men and women is significantly less than in earlier studies.
Conclusions: Our study confirms that hearing loss is highly prevalent in the general unscreened population of older adults. However, the difference in hearing between sexes was considerably less than previously reported.