Following decades of technological advances and awareness campaigns, the social acceptability of hearing aids and seeking treatment for hearing loss is growing and enabling those experiencing hearing loss to reinvigorate their lives and protect against future declines in hearing and cognition.
This year, World Hearing Day, March 3, focused its messaging on reducing the stigma and myths surrounding hearing aids and hearing-related healthcare, with the goal of encouraging individuals to seek treatment that can immediately improve their lives. The annual campaign, created in 2007 by the World Health Organization to spread knowledge and advocacy for the treatment and prevention of hearing loss, noted that more than 80% of global ear and hearing care needs are unmet, leading to societal costs of $980 billion per year due to productivity losses and social exclusion.
17 years of progress
As a practicing audiologist, I understand the difficulties of delivering quality hearing care and strive to de-stigmatize hearing loss and treatment among patients, physicians, the media and society in general. Since World Hearing Day began 17 years ago, the state of hearing care has advanced dramatically through consistent improvements in hearing aid technologies and increased knowledge of the progressive nature of hearing loss and its relation to both depression and cognitive impairment.
Using smaller components, new battery technologies and improved processing, many hearing aids today resemble bluetooth earbuds in both form and function, which now are so common that they carry no stigma. Smaller devices that offer bluetooth capabilities already are helping convince more people to treat their hearing loss earlier, delivering numerous health benefits.
The addition of new capabilities has been coupled with more advanced user controls, often accessed through mobile device apps that enable simple, fast adaptation to various sound environments. Convenience also has been upgraded with the advent of rechargeable batteries and charging cases that can provide up to a week of full-time use on a single charge.
Awareness improves acceptance
I used to begin discussions with patients by explaining how we can improve their daily experiences and noting that hearing issues, like vision issues, only compound over time when left untreated. Thanks to global advocacy, and perhaps even the widespread use of targeted advertising, my patients now enter my office with much greater knowledge than just a decade ago.
Many of them are aware that hearing loss has been directly linked to depression, anxiety and mental decline, including being the top modifiable issue linked to dementia, with hearing aids reducing dementia risk by an astounding 50% among patients considered high-risk based on age or other factors. This is related to reductions in conversations and interactions due to hearing loss that are necessary to maintain language and cognitive skills.
The warning signs also are becoming more widely known, thanks to increased awareness campaigns from insurance companies and organizations. Traditionally, it was easy for those with early stages of hearing loss to overlook it or write it off as normal, until it worsened to have a more significant effect on their communications, relationships and enjoyment of basic daily activities. Thanks to the heightened awareness and more user-friendly hearing aids, more and more people are seeking early treatment and improving their future risk profile.
Focusing on quality of life
Hearing tests and subsequent sampling of hearing aids remains the strongest method for demonstrating the power and effectiveness of modern devices. After determining the severity of an individual’s condition, we can clearly convey how daily experiences will be improved by using hearing aids, from general scenarios such as taking phone calls or conversing with loved ones to specific situations such as riding a bicycle or adapting to the loudness of a movie theater.
Those discussions about quality of life can entice patients to test and adopt hearing aids regardless of their age, past experiences or initial reluctance. Basically, once someone is in the chair, we can more easily convince them of the benefits today than we could 20 years ago, because modern devices are simply better in every way. They are less noticeable, last longer, don’t require battery changes, can adapt to solve specific hearing needs and even provide the noise canceling features popularized by modern headphones and earbuds.
All of those factors make it easier and less intrusive to wear hearing aids on a regular basis, just like the addition of ear hooks made the use of eyeglasses explode almost 300 years ago. The easier it is to forget that one is wearing an assistive device such as a hearing aid, combined with wider applicability to daily needs, the more likely it is that the user will permanently integrate it into his or her routine. By enhancing comfort and increasing capabilities, the latest devices undoubtedly have helped reduce stigma around hearing treatment, and they will continue to do so as manufacturers pursue ever more innovative designs and functions.
Thanks to campaigns such as World Hearing Day and the consistent research and development of better solutions by HearUSA and others, the state of hearing care is better than ever before. We must continue to promote and acknowledge the realities of hearing loss and its progressive dangers while we work to make hearing care more accessible and acceptable to everyone.
Dan Troast is an audiologist and hearing care professional at HearUSA, with a network of 4,000 independent hearing care professionals and more than 380 HearUSA centers.
Have a column idea? See our submission guidelines here.
The opinions expressed in each McKnight’s Senior Living marketplace column are those of the author and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Senior Living.
