TY - JOUR T1 - Prevalence of hearing impairment in the elderly living at home JF - The Journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners JO - J R Coll Gen Pract SP - 155 LP - 160 VL - 31 IS - 224 AU - Katia Gilhome Herbst AU - Charlotte Humphrey Y1 - 1981/03/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/31/224/155.abstract N2 - Using pure tone audiometry, we assessed the prevalence of hearing impairment in a sample of elderly people living at home and aged 70 or more. Deafness was defined as an average loss over the speech frequencies at 1 kHz, 2 kHz and 4 kHz of 35 db or more in the better ear. We found that 60 per cent of the sample were deaf. This figure is substantially higher than previous estimates arrived at without the use of audiometry. We discuss some possible reasons for this discrepancy and consider the implications of this level of prevalence of hearing impairment for the health care of the elderly. ER -