Auditory Rehabilitation 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.