The two faces of presbyacusis: XXXX and psychosocial consequences.

@entity1 @entity393
A study of @entity393 and handicap was performed in a sample of elderly @entity1 living in an urban area of G  teborg, Sweden. The aim was to describe the psychosocial consequences of presbyacusis. For this purpose, elderly @entity1 with fairly uncontaminated presbyacusis were chosen. The study group consisted of 154 @entity1 (59 @entity1 and 95 @entity1 ) between the ages of 70 and 91 with a median age of 78 years. The methods used included a self-assessed hearing instrument, pure-tone audiometry, and registration of desired services regarding rehabilitative audiology. The questionnaire included 26 items, 20 of them within four areas: assessment of normality, communication, quality of life and environment/orientation. The results showed that the assessment, whether the hearing was normal or not, was correlated with audiometrically measured hearing. Many of the @entity1 expressed concern that their hearing had deteriorated. Communication situations with background noise were troublesome for many of the @entity1 , but they had only minor problems when performing daily activities like shopping. The quality of life in general was only mildly affected by @entity393 . Items regarding environment and orientation showed varying results. Some everyday aspects of listening were related to hearing ability, but directional hearing was not correlated with measured hearing. In spite of the @entity1 ' worry about @entity393 , only 8% requested hearing aids as a result of the examination.
