Supporting the diagnosis of hearing loss and dementia in the clinical setting: A community conversation

In 2022, it was estimated that 401,300 Australians were living with dementia, and in 2021, dementia was the second leading cause of death (10% of all deaths) in Australia.¹ A recent study by Livingston et al.² revealed that there are several modifiable risk factors that can increase the risk of dementia, with the highest risk factor being untreated mid-life hearing loss. As dementia screening practices do not consider the role of hearing loss on cognitive assessments, and vice versa, older adults with comorbid hearing and cognitive impairment are often misdiagnosed.³

Initially, our aim was to identify gaps in the knowledge, attitudes and practices of general practitioners, hearing health-care professionals and clinicians in memory clinics, to aid in providing recommendations for additional training, guidelines and communication strategies. As recommended by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC),⁴ we conducted a community conversation to help gain ideas from those within the community regarding supporting patients with comorbid hearing and cognitive impairment. A total of 10 participants who were older than 65 years of age attended the discussion, with all having either hearing loss or caring for someone with dementia.

The questions and key responses given through the discussion are shown in Table 1.

Overall, participants highlighted that the following directions should be taken: have audiology and memory clinics closer to each other for ease of access to the other profession, and have more practical experience and training of other related fields within courses for studying students to increase the scope of practice for each profession.

These responses further support the notion that training and clear guidelines need to be set in place to allow audiology and memory clinics, together with general practitioners, to further improve the patient experience for individuals with cognitive impairment/dementia and hearing loss. There is a growing body of evidence to highlight the association between hearing loss and dementia,⁵ but there is a clear lack of evidence to help aid in translating this knowledge into clinical practice. For clearer guidelines to be set in place, further consumer and community driven research is warranted in this area.

No conflicts of interest declared.