Hiromi Tsuruoka

Hearing impairment and quality of life for the elderly in nursing homes

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study is to find out the effects of hearing impairment on the QOL of nursing home residents. METHODS We constructed the self-assessment questionnaire designed for evaluating the QOL for the elderly in nursing homes. The questionnaire is constructed of physical, social, communicational and psychological states. It was administered to 60 subjects >65 years of age (mean age: 79 years) living in nursing homes, with hearing threshold levels in the better ear ranging from normal to severe and their response were analyzed. RESULTS Chronbachs alpha-values of the questionnaire obtained ranged from 0.66 to 0.91 and was 0.84 overall. The reliability and validity of the questionnaire as well as its brevity, simplicity, ease of administration and interpretation, all satisfied its use in assessing the QOL of the elderly in nursing homes. It tended to decrease the points of communication scale, sociability scale and psychological scale (PGC Morale Scale) accordingly to elevate the threshold. As for subscales of communication, hearing disability was correlated statistically to the sociability and psychological. CONCLUSION Our questionnaire is regarded as a useful tool for evaluating the QOL of the elderly. Hearing loss affects the communication, sociability and psychological aspect of the QOL for the elderly in the nursing homes.

Word deafness after resection of a pineal body tumor in the presence of normal wave latencies of the auditory brain stem response.

We studied the case of a 48-year-old woman who had resection of a pineal body tumor in terms of postoperative audiological function. Postoperative magnetic resonance imaging disclosed partial inferior colliculi destruction and medial geniculate body degeneration. A pure tone audiogram revealed only moderate sensorineural hearing loss, but her speech perception was totally impaired. The binaural sound localization function was also impaired. The auditory brain stem response (ABR) showed waves I, III, and V to have normal latencies. The amplitude of wave III was larger than that of wave V. These results support the view that the waves of the ABR are elicited from multiple sources in the auditory brain stem nuclei and tracts. This case suggests a substantial role for the inferior colliculus and medial geniculate body in the processing of speech perception and sound localization.