He summarized, With the evidence of increased prevalence of hearing loss, the medical community should be involving itself with earlier identification of hearing loss and appropriate intervention.
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October 2008Dr. Agrawal agreed with this summation. I think certainly that knowing the problem exists is a big issue. It’s important that we know that hearing loss is fairly prevalent and does have a pretty significant impact on quality of life, she said.
Wider-scale screening at an earlier age, with referral to an audiologist when appropriate, can have a very positive effect on our ability to identify problems early, especially in higher risk patients, reduce some of those risks, and hopefully prevent early hearing loss from progressing.-Yuri Agrawal, MD
She concluded, Asking people if they are having trouble hearing isn’t nearly enough. Wider-scale screening at an earlier age, with referral to an audiologist when appropriate, can have a very positive effect on our ability to identify problems early, especially in higher risk patients, reduce some of those risks, and hopefully prevent early hearing loss from progressing.
Reference
- Agrawal Y, Platz E, Niparko JK. Prevalence of hearing loss and differences by demographic characteristics among US adults. Arch Intern Med 2008;168: 1522-30.
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