Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) have recently begun to recruit sufferers of hearing loss as part of a new study, which aims to find out whether or not wearing a hearing aid (or a similar device) can help to prevent people from falling.
They are looking for a connection linking the likelihood of falling with the loss of hearing capabilities, and are searching for twenty different adults between the ages of 50 and 80 – ten of whom who have perfect hearing and ten who suffer from some loss of hearing, but have never used a hearing aid.
This new project will be worked on in partnership with researchers from the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth (UNTHSC), and hopes to find that using a hearing aid could improve the balance of people who suffer with auditory problems, thus reducing the probability of them falling over.
The Statistics
Roughly one third of older adults experience a fall each year, many of which result in serious, often life-threatening, injuries. The reason for this is fairly simple – your sense of balance relies mostly of the vestibular system, located in the inner ear, in combination with your vision and touch. If this is so you should book a hearing test, find out more here about that.
It is believed that, because the vestibular system lies in the ear, a person’s balance could well be negatively affected by a loss of hearing. Plenty of studies have been done into the connection between sight and motor impairments and their impact on the balance, but none into hearing as yet.
What Will the Study Achieve?
The study hopes to identify those people who are most at risk of serious falls and will examine the varying effects of different hearing aids on the ability to balance and walk normally. Find out more here.
The researchers are looking to record the participants as they traverse normal, everyday environments, in stark contrast to previous studies, which tended not to replicate everyday situations. Dr Linda Thibodeau, one of the professors at UTD’s Behavioural and Brain Sciences department, claims that this is where the new study proves its worth.
What Will Happen During the Study?
The UTD study will give any volunteer an overall assessment of their hearing and their balance ability, and will (if necessary) fit them with a hearing aid, tailored for their specific hearing loss by a trained audiologist.
Those people who get hearing aids will be equipped with the bilateral type, with FM systems, for a period of six weeks. Over the next six to eight weeks, each volunteer will be required to visit the UTD Callier Center for Communication Disorders on five separate occasions. This will take around twelve hours in total.
The second part of the study will take place in Fort Worth, where researchers will compare the test results from before and after the fitting of the hearing aid, and see whether the volunteers’ balance has improved after the six weeks.
Hopefully, the study will give a greater understanding of how important hearing is, and how it can affect various aspects of a person’s life.
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