Auditory Rehabilitation and Cognition in Alzheimer Patients

Auditory Rehabilitation With Hearing Aids and Cognition in Alzheimer Patients

Alzheimer disease is a neurodegenerative disease. Recent studies suggest that subjects with hearing loss are more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease. Hearing loss can be consecutive to presbycusis and/or to central auditory dysfunction.

Standard audiometric measures with pure tone and speech intelligibility allow the diagnosis of presbycusis. However, to demonstrate central auditory dysfunction, specific audiometric tests as noisy and/or dichotic tests, are needed.

Actually, no consensus exists to investigate hearing loss in people with Alzheimer's disease; therefore hearing loss may be an early manifestation of Alzheimer's disease. Until now, investigations and clinical procedure related to the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease ignored the hearing ability of the patient. However, the major part of care management and investigations implies the patient's communication ability with caregivers. Hearing loss may be one of the most unrecognized deficit in subjects with Alzheimer's disease. Auditory rehabilitation with hearing aids could benefit to the patient to decrease cognitive decline but this management must be investigate during longitudinal studies in order to demonstrate their efficiency and need to be compared with a placebo.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Alzheimer patient
• Mini Mental state examination= 15-25 or mild cognitive impairment
• Over 65 yo
• Sensorineural hearing loss with pure tone average over 30 dB
• Language: French
• Able to sign the consent
• Affiliated to the French social security

Exclusion Criteria:

• Conductive hearing loss
• Retrocochlear hearing loss
• History of neurological disorders with consequences in hearing loss (vascular accident; brain surgery, cerebral tumors, head trauma with loss consciousness)
• patient included in another study
• French no spoken
• chronic used of drugs or alcohol