Hearing Aid Use in Older Adults With Postlingual Sensorineural Hearing Loss: Protocol for a Prospective Cohort Study

Abstract

Background

Older adults with postlingual sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) exhibit a poor prognosis that not only includes impaired auditory function but also rapid cognitive decline, especially speech-related cognition, in addition to psychosocial dysfunction and an increased risk of dementia. Consistent with this prognosis, individuals with SNHL exhibit global atrophic brain alteration as well as altered neural function and regional brain organization within the cortical substrates that underlie auditory and speech processing. Recent evidence suggests that the use of hearing aids might ameliorate this prognosis.

Objective

The objective was to study the effects of a hearing aid use intervention on neurocognitive and psychosocial functioning in individuals with SNHL aged ≥55 years.

Methods

All aspects of this study will be conducted at Swinburne University of Technology (Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia). We will recruit 2 groups (n=30 per group) of individuals with mild to moderate SNHL from both the community and audiology health clinics (Alison Hennessy Audiology, Chelsea Hearing Pty Ltd). These groups will include individuals who have worn a hearing aid for, at least, 12 months or never worn a hearing aid. All participants would be asked to complete, at 2 time points (t) including baseline (t=0) and follow-up (t=6 months), tests of hearing and psychosocial and cognitive function and attend a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) session. The MRI session will include both structural and functional MRI (sMRI and fMRI) scans, the latter involving the performance of a novel speech processing task.

Results

This research is funded by the Barbara Dicker Brain Sciences Foundation Grants, the Australian Research Council, Alison Hennessy Audiology, and Chelsea Hearing Pty Ltd under the Industry Transformation Training Centre Scheme (ARC Project #IC140100023). We obtained the ethics approval on November 18, 2017 (Swinburne University Human Research Ethics Committee protocol number SHR Project 2017/266). The recruitment began in December 2017 and will be completed by December 2020.

Conclusions

This is the first study to assess the effect hearing aid use has on neural, cognitive, and psychosocial factors in individuals with SNHL who have never used hearing aids. Furthermore, this study is expected to clarify the relationships among altered brain structure and function, psychosocial factors, and cognition in response to the hearing aid use.

Trial Registration

Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry: ACTRN12617001616369; https://anzctr.org.au/Trial/Registration/TrialReview.aspx?ACTRN=12617001616369 (Accessed by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/70yatZ9ze)

International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)

RR1-10.2196/9916