Hearing Status of Ambulatory Senior Citizens

The objective of this paper is to provide some current data on the hearing sensitivity for pure-tone stimuli for a population of ambulatory, noninstitutionalized Caucasian males and females 60 years and older. Data pertaining to four areas of hearing status are reported, i.e., the average pure-tone audiometric characteristic, sex differences, changes with age, and a comparison with institutionalized persons of similar age. Our results indicate that the typical audiometric configuration is a symmetrical gradual roll-off in the higher audiometric frequencies rarely averaging in the speech range more than 55 dB regardless of age. Hearing levels for men and women differ somewhat between 60 and 80 years and then become quite similar. Hearing sensitivity does decrease with age and between 70 and 80 years it decreases about 1.5 dB per year. Finally, as one might expect, active ambulatory older people have better hearing sensitivity than those of the same age who are in nursing homes.