Say What? One-Fifth of People Who Need Hearing Aids Don't Wear Them, UK Study Reveals

A UK study of middle-aged people revealed that only one-fifth of people with hearing problems wear a hearing aid.

University of Manchester researchers report in the journal Ear and Hearing that among 160,000 people in the UK aged 40 to 69 years, 10.7 percent had hearing problems but only 2.1 percent used a hearing aid.

Hearing problems were defined as difficultly listening to and comprehending speech in the presence of background noise. The researchers also learned that among those surveyed, people from working class or ethnic minority backgrounds were the most likely to have hearing problems.

"This is the first study to describe the prevalence of difficulties understanding speech in background noise in a large sample of the population, anywhere in the world," Piers Dawes, from The University of Manchester's audiology and deafness research group, said in a statement.

"It shows hearing aids remain significantly underused despite significant improvements in both technology and their provision, and a high proportion of people who would benefit from treatment may not receive effective intervention.

"Reasons for the lack of uptake might be lack of awareness of treatment options, lack of recognition of their difficulties, finding hearing aids uncomfortable or finding them of limited help," Dawes said.

Dawes and his colleagues, including Kevin Munro, a professor of audiology at Manchester, used the UK Biobank, a large database of UK citizens, to get their test group.

The researchers speculate that people are reluctant to wear a hearing aid, but not other sense-enhancement devices, such as eyeglasses, because they are not fashionable and carry a stigma of medical debilitation.

"There still seems to be a stigma attached to wearing a hearing aid, where as there is little stigma now associated with vision loss and wearing spectacles," Munro said. "This might be because eye care also involves lifestyle choices - it's available on the high street without the need to see a [physician] and onward referral to an audiologist in hospital, which emphasizes illness and frailty."