OAEs as hearing screening in patients with dementia

Introduction The link between hearing loss and dementia has been known for a long time, but the cause has not yet been clarified. Nevertheless, patients with dementia are not in the focus of our attention. Especially in patients in residential care the audiological care is insufficient, both diagnostically and therapeutically.

Methods In order to investigate whether otoacoustic emissions, analogous to pediatric audiology, constitute a suitable screening of a hearing loss that requires a hearing aid, pure tone audiograms, speech audiograms, TEOAEs and DPOAEs were carried out on site in patients with proven dementia who were cared for in a geriatric clinic or in residential homes. Results Audiometric tests were carried out in n = 40 patients with mild and moderate dementia. Despite the cognitive limitation, tone and speech audiometry could be performed in all cases without any problems. The performance of the OAE’s was not tolerated or rejected by 3 patients. In 32 of the examined patients an audiometric indication for hearing aids was found. In the 8 cases without hearing loss TEOAEs and DPOAEs could be detected. Of the 37 completely examined patients, only 2 showed a slight discrepancy between the tone and speech audiometric result and the result of the otoacoustic emissions.

Discussion Tone and speech audiometry seem to be feasible despite the presence of dementia, but they are certainly not suitable for on-site screening. Validated questionnaires for screening for the presence of hearing loss are not yet available for patients with dementia whereas our results indicate that OAEs could be used as on-site screening.

Publication History

Article published online:
12 May 2023