Study on the correlationship between hearing loss and cognitive decline among older adults in Beijing / 中华健康管理学杂志

Objective:To study the correlation between hearing loss and cognitive decline in community-dwelling older adults and to analyze the influencing factors.Methods:Using Pure-tone audiometry, the Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly (HHIE), Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, a survey was conducted with 492 community-dwelling older adults aged 60 years and above in Beijing. Age, gender, education level, hearing loss, levels of anxiety and depression, and other factors were used as independent variables, and the MMSE scores were used as dependent variables. Analysis of variance and multiple linear regression were performed.Results:Among the 492 subjects, based on the better ears, 418 (85.0%) had hearing loss and 160 (32.5%) had disabled hearing loss. Factors such as age (β=-0.33, P<0.01), gender (β=0.09, P=0.04), education level (β=0.31, P<0.01), hearing loss (β=-0.11, P=0.02) and marital status (β=0.56, P=0.02) were significantly related to cognitive decline. Gender (β=-0.17, P<0.01) and hearing loss (β=0.08, P=0.02) correlated with anxiety indicators; gender (β=-0.84, P=0.02) and hearing loss (β=0.04, P=0.01) also correlated with depression indicators. Conclusion:Results indicated a correlation between hearing loss and cognitive decline, and between hearing loss and anxiety and depression among community-dwelling older adults in Beijing.

Analysis the relationship between the found ways and first diagnosis age for large vestibular aqueduct children / 临床耳鼻咽喉头颈外科杂志

OBJECTIVE@#To explore the found ways and first diagnosis age of children with large vestibular aqueduct, and their relations with hearing loss.@*METHOD@#Medical histories of 122 cases of children diagnosed with large vestibular aqueduct by HRCT or MRI had been collected from January 2009 to April 2014 in our hospital children's hearing diagnosis center clinic. Found ways comprise of accepting universal newborn hearing screening (UNHS) group and unaccepting UNHS group. Accepting UNHS children were divided into two ears unpassing group, single ear unpassing group and passing group. The patients in unaccepting UNHS group were divided into not sensitive to sounds, speech stunting, sudden hearing loss, and other group. Analysis the relationship between the found ways and first diagnosis age and their relations with hearing loss.@*RESULT@#There are 84 cases (68.85%) accepting UNHS, the average age of first diagnosis was (17.24 ± 17.08) months; 37 cases (31.15%) are not accepting UNHS. The average age of first diagnosis was (30.92 ± 18.21) months. The average first diagnosis age of accepting UNHS group was more earlier than the unaccepting UNHS group. The difference was statistically signif- icant (P 0.05). In unaccepting UNHS group ,the average first diagnosis age of the mild-to-moderate hearing loss group was later than the very severe hearing loss group (P < 0.01).@*CONCLUSION@#Most of large vestibular aqueduct children can be found and receive diagnosis early by UNHS. But part of these patients with late-onset or progressive hearing loss, especially these with mild-to-moderate hearing loss cannot be found early, which should arouse our attention.

Locally weighted least squares estimation of DPOAE evoked by continuously sweeping primaries / 生物医学工程学杂志

Distortion product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) signal can be used for diagnosis of hearing loss so that it has an important clinical value. Continuously using sweeping primaries to measure DPOAE provides an efficient tool to record DPOAE data rapidly when DPOAE is measured in a large frequency range. In this paper, locally weighted least squares estimation (LWLSE) of 2f1-f2 DPOAE is presented based on least-squares-fit (LSF) algorithm, in which DPOAE is evoked by continuously sweeping tones. In our study, we used a weighted error function as the loss function and the weighting matrixes in the local sense to obtain a smaller estimated variance. Firstly, ordinary least squares estimation of the DPOAE parameters was obtained. Then the error vectors were grouped and the different local weighting matrixes were calculated in each group. And finally, the parameters of the DPOAE signal were estimated based on least squares estimation principle using the local weighting matrixes. The simulation results showed that the estimate variance and fluctuation errors were reduced, so the method estimates DPOAE and stimuli more accurately and stably, which facilitates extraction of clearer DPOAE fine structure.