Hearing Loss as a Modifier of the Association Between Comorbidities and Mortality

Comorbidities increase mortality risk in older adults. Hearing loss impacts health care communication, utilization, and outcomes may influence this association, but to our knowledge, no study to-date has examined the impact of hearing loss on the comorbidity-mortality relationship.

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Hearing loss appears to amplify mortality risk associated with comorbidities in older adults, strengthening the case for routine hearing screening and hearing-aid provision as part of broader chronic-disease management — audiologists should be aware of this compounding risk when prioritising care.

If hearing loss acts as a mortality-risk modifier in the presence of comorbidities, it elevates the systemic health priority of hearing care beyond communication and moves it into the domain of preventive geriatric medicine.

1. 01Published in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society; examines hearing loss as a modifier of comorbidity–mortality associations.
2. 02Hearing loss may compound the mortality risk of concurrent conditions such as cardiovascular disease or diabetes in older adults.
3. 03Findings support the view that untreated hearing loss has systemic, life-expectancy consequences beyond communication difficulty.
4. 04Study design is observational, so causality cannot be established from this work alone.
5. 05Results have implications for screening guidelines and the integration of hearing care into geriatric chronic-disease programmes.

PMID

42728658

DOI

10.1111/jgs.70703.

Journal

Journal of the American Geriatrics Society

Publication type

research_article

Evidence level

2b

Population

Older adults with varying degrees of hearing loss and multiple comorbidities

Intervention

Hearing loss (as an exposure/modifier variable)

Comparator

Older adults without hearing loss