A influência da prótese auditiva na qualidade de vida do idoso

Abstract

Hearing loss in the elderly is a disability that causes the greatest impact on your daily life, making it difficult to communicate with the environment. Occurs as a result, a great difficulty accepting this inability on the part of the family, and the very elderly, there is a need to make them aware of this difficulty, and how it is harmful. In this age group there is a natural tendency to isolation, volunteer, and these elderly deprive of full social life, and as a result, may lead to varying levels of depression. This study aimed to evaluate the influence of hearing aids on quality of life and hearing in older adults with hearing impairment. The study included 50 older adults. Being 29 females and 21males, aged over 60 years. After completing the battery of audiological tests were divided into two groups: G1 – Intervention Group, with made use of hearing aids, and G2 – Control Group, who did not use hearing aids. In all test was applied HHIE-s, MMSE, and WHOQOL-Bref before the use of hearing aids and 12 weeks after. We conducted weekly monitoring to ensure effective adaptation and use of prostheses adapted. In G1, the analysis of the HHIE is showed that the scores Scale Emotional and Scale Social/Situational post in the of hearing aids, showed statistically significant compared to the G2, which remained unchanged. The results of the MMSE in the post intervention period showed no statistically significant differences comparing the two groups. In the test WHOQOL-Bref the same fact occurred because the changes were not statistically significant. The use of hearing aids for the elderly provides a lower perception of participation constraints observed through the use of self-perception questionnaire HHIE-S. The quality of life improves, demonstrated by WHOQOL in the physical domain, compared with seniors who do not use hearing amplification. There was also an improvement in the MMSE test scores, compared with the group without amplification.