Understanding the experience of hearing loss in people with Lewy Pathology Dementias (Parkinson’s Dementia and Dementia with Lewy Bodies)

Readman, Megan Rose, Plack, Chris, Tsimpida, Dalia and Giebel, Clarissa (2024) Understanding the experience of hearing loss in people with Lewy Pathology Dementias (Parkinson’s Dementia and Dementia with Lewy Bodies). (doi:10.17605/osf.io/zpg97).

Abstract

Recently, an accumulation of evidence has identified that hearing loss may not simply be an inevitable part of ageing. Rather, hearing loss appears to be a substantial risk factor for the occurrence of all-cause incident dementia (See Loughrey, et al., 2018 for review), and more specifically Alzheimer’s disease (Zheng et al., 2017). For example, Lin and Colleagues (2011) demonstrated that mild hearing loss almost doubles dementia risk , moderate hearing loss triples dementia risk and severe hearing loss increases dementia risk almost 5 times, over more than 10 years of follow up. Whilst the evidence is compelling, little consideration has been given to the experience of hearing loss in dementia and how the occurrence of hearing loss may influence ones day-to-day life and overall quality of life. Moreover, most studies consider an ‘all-cause’ dementia outcome. However, dementia is an umbrella term used to categorise multiple, symptomatically similar, conditions. Thus, an ‘all-cause’ category does little to elucidate the experience of hearing loss specific to dementia types. Subsequently, the present study aims to further explore peoples understanding of the relation between hearing loss and dementia, the experiences of hearing loss for people with Lewy Pathology dementias (Parkinson's Disease Dementia and Dementia with Lewy bodies), the pathway of accessing audiology assessment and treatment for people living with Lewy Pathology dementias, and the barriers to audiology services.

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Contributors

Author: Dalia Tsimpida

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