An overview of hearing impairment in older adults: perspectives for rehabilitation with hearing aids

Background: Hearing loss is a common problem in modern society due to the combined effects of noise, aging, disease, and heredity. According to 2005 estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO), 278 million people worldwide have moderate to profound hearing loss in both ears. Incidence increases with age. Approx - imately 31.4% of people over age 65 have hearing loss and 40% to 50% of people 75 and older have a hearing loss. Only 1 out of 5 people who could ben - efit from a hearing aids actually wears one. Objective: To review literature for articles that focus on hearing aids. State of the Art: Hearing aids have continu - ously evolved over the past 50 years, in term of styles and technology. Technological advances in hearing aids and HATS (Hearing Assistive Tech - nologies, and Rehabilitation Services) have ex - panded the range of options available to improve the success of a device use. Today's hearing aids differ significantly from their analog predecessors because the application of digital signal process - ing has permitted many adaptive and/or automatic features. Included in the benefits of digital hearing aids are improved sound quality, multiple listening programs for different listening environments, ad - vanced noise reduction strategies, acoustic feed - back reduction, compatibility with remote control options, and flexibility in manipulation of the fre - quency, compression, and gain. Conclusions: The hearing aids continue to be developed to enhance the characteristics in terms of rehabilitation and acceptability.