Untreated Hearing Loss Raises Healthcare Expenses More Than 40%
For many years, experts have been investigating the impact loss of hearing has on a person’s health. Finding out what untreated hearing loss can do to your healthcare spending is the focus of a new study. As the cost of healthcare keeps rising, the medical community and consumers are looking for ways to lower these expenses. You can reduce it significantly by something as simple as taking care of your hearing loss, according to a study published on november 8 2018.
How Hearing Loss Affects Health
There are hidden risks with untreated hearing loss, as reported by Johns Hopkins Medicine. Researchers spent 12 years tracking adults with anywhere from mild to severe hearing loss and found it had a considerable impact on brain health. For example:
- Dementia is five times more likely in someone suffering from severe hearing loss
- Someone with moderate hearing loss triples their risk of dementia
- Somebody with minor hearing loss doubles their risk of dementia
The study shows that the brain atrophies at a faster pace when a person has hearing loss. The brain is put under stress that can lead to damage because it has to work harder to do things such as maintaining balance.
Also, quality of life is affected. A person who doesn’t hear very well is more likely to have anxiety and stress. Depression is also more likely. Higher medical costs are the result of all of these issues.
The Newest Study
The newest study published November in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) shows that it becomes a budget buster if you decide not to address your loss of hearing. This study was also led by experts from Johns Hopkins in collaboration with AARP, the University of California San Francisco and Optum Labs.
They examined data from 77,000 to 150,000 patients over the age of 50 who had untreated hearing loss. People with normal hearing created 26 percent less health care costs compared to people who were recently diagnosed with hearing loss.
As time goes by, this amount continues to grow. Over ten years, healthcare costs increase by 46 percent. Those figures, when broken down, average $22,434 per person.
Some factors that are involved in the increase are:
- Depression
- Lower quality of life
- Cognitive decline
- Falls
- Dementia
A connection between untreated hearing loss and a higher rate of mortality is suggested by a second study conducted by the Bloomberg School. They also uncovered that people with untreated hearing loss had:
- 6.9 more diagnoses of depression
- 3.2 more diagnoses of dementia per 100 over the course of 10 years
- 3.6 more falls
Those stats correlate with the study by Johns Hopkins.
Hearing Loss is on the Rise
According to the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders:
- Hearing loss is prevalent in 55 to 64 year olds at a rate of 8.5 percent
- There’s significant deafness in those aged 45 to 54
- Currently, between two and three out of every 1,000 children has hearing loss
- Around 15 percent of young people 18 years old have trouble hearing
For those aged 64 to 74 the number goes up to 25 percent and for someone over 74 it goes up to 50 percent. In the future, those figures are predicted to rise. By the year 2060, as many as 38 million people in this country may have hearing loss.
The study doesn’t mention how wearing hearing aids can change these numbers, though. What they do know is that using hearing aids can eliminate some of the health problems associated with hearing loss. To determine whether using hearing aids lessens the cost of healthcare, additional research is necessary. There are more benefits to wearing them than not, undoubtedly. Make an appointment with a hearing care professional to see if hearing aids are right for you.
