Geriatrics

Question 1

Is greater hearing loss related to poor cognition scores?

Answer 1

• Digit symbol substitution (DSS) scores drop 0.5 points for NH adults but 7.0 points for adults w/ 25 dB of HL
• Stroop and Trail Making B tasks show similar 7 year change with 25 dB hearing loss
• ~40% faster decline on MMSE
• ~32% faster decline on DSS

Question 2

What questionnaires can be administered to geriatric patients?

Answer 2

• HHI-E
• ADL
• Short form health survey (SF-36)
• Social functioning questionnaire

Question 3

Describe the short-form health survey (SF-36).

Answer 3

• 36 items that assess 8 concepts:
  1) Limitations of physical activities because of health problems
  2) Limitations of social activities because health or emotional problems
  3) Limitations in usual role activities because of physical health problems
  4) Bodily pain
  5) General mental health (psychological distress and well-being)
  6) Limitations in usual role activities because of emotional problems
  7) Vitality (energy and fatigue)
  8) General health perceptions

Question 4

What is the social functioning questionnaire?

Answer 4

• 8 item self-rating scale (0-24)
• Domains of: social life, work, home activities, finances, spare time activities, and social, family, and sexual relationships
• Often used in conjunction with 90-item Symptom checklist

Question 5

What effects of hearing loss on QoL?

Answer 5

• Severity of HL is strongly linked with reduced QoL
• However, degree of effect on QOL is not always correlated with degree of impairment
• 39% of individuals with hearing loss reported good QoL, compared to 68% of individuals w/o hearing loss

Question 6

How intervention generally help geriatric patients?

Answer 6

• Decrease in anxiety and depression
• Improvement in some domains of SF-36
• Improvements in general and hearing related QoL
• Reductions in social and emotional consequences

Question 7

What is a significant factor in determining post-op outcomes for seniors?

Answer 7

-Ratio of duration of deafness to age at implantation

Question 8

How does age-related hearing impairment affect lipreading and AV integration?

Answer 8

• NH and mild-to-mod HI adults performed similarly on V and AV speech perception (exception: HI performed better on V identification)
• Visual enhancement, auditory enhancement, and AV integration showed no significant difference as a function of hearing status
• So although increased reliance on visual cues, improvement on speech perception isn’t seen because not able to maximize skills that are heavily-relied on

Question 9

What is involved in “healthy aging”?

Answer 9

• Cognitive vitality, avoiding dementia
• Avoiding injury
• Maintaining physical activity
• Keeping social, engaged, and active
• Health economic outcomes/mortality

Question 10

What are some programming considerations for seniors?

Answer 10

• Pulse rate
• Processing strategy
• Configuration (alerting/monitoring features)

Question 11

What are some device considerations for seniors?

Answer 11

• Patient dexterity
• Vision
• Simplicity
• Accessories