Combined effect of self-perceived voice disorders and hearing loss on social acts in older adults: a 1-year longitudinal study.
Iku Nishimura, Yuya Fujii, Jieun Yoon and 1 others
PMID 41835177WHAT IT FOUND
Older adults who reported voice problems went out less over a year, from 4.1 to 3.2 days a week.
Those with hearing problems alone showed no significant change. People with both declined too, but that combined result was only marginally significant.
Key findings
01Participants who reported voice problems went out significantly less after one year, from 4.1 to 3.2 days a week, while those without voice problems stayed at 3.8 days a week. The interaction between time and voice status was significant.
02Hearing loss on its own was not associated with a significant change in outings over the year, and the group with both voice and hearing problems declined (4.2 to 3.3 days a week) on the back of an interaction that was only marginally significant (p=0.091).
03Neither the family nor the friend score on the social network questionnaire changed significantly over the year in any group, whether defined by voice, hearing, or both.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only 134 people were analysed and the groups were very uneven, with just 7 having voice problems alone, 31 hearing problems alone and 18 both. The combined finding rests on 18 people. The combined voice-and-hearing interaction was only marginally significant (p=0.091), so that result is not firm. Voice and hearing problems were defined by the participants' own questionnaire answers, not a clinical examination. Some people counted as impaired may not have had a real problem, and some with a real problem may have been missed. Everyone lived in one city in Japan, so the figures may not apply to other places or health systems. The follow-up was one year, which the authors say may be too long a wait for social networks to change measurably but too short to capture the full picture. The social network questionnaire may be too blunt to detect what voice and hearing problems actually change, and things that shape how much people go out, such as how walkable the neighbourhood is, were not measured.
Declared interests
The work was funded by the Japanese government through the MEXT COI STREAM and COI-NEXT initiatives and a Japan Science and Technology Agency SPRING grant. The authors declare no conflicts of interest. No company selling a treatment was involved.
The easy way to misread this
Do not take this as proof that hearing loss alone keeps older adults at home. In this study the hearing-loss group's outings did not change significantly. The combined voice-and-hearing result also rests on a marginally significant interaction (p=0.091) in only 18 people, so it is a signal worth noticing rather than a settled effect.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →