HEARING LOSS IN ELDERLY COULD DIFFICULT THE COMMUNICATION?

Purpose:  to research if the hearing loss brings consequences in the communication of the elderly who lives in asylum.

Methods:  it was done a tonal audiometry in 14 elderly and it was apply a questionnaire about communication problems.

Results:  the majority of the elderly tested didn't has significant hearing loss, and the communication was not affected in those who has hearing deficiency.

Conclusion:  we concluded that the hearing loss didn't interfere in elderly communication maybe because the loss found were only in higher frequencies and it was not severe. We could also observed that those elderly who had neurological problems were more isolated than the others ones, maybe because they had more communication problems.

Keywords:
Deafness/complications; Aged; Communication barriers