Prevalence of Hearing Loss and Hearing Care Use Among Asian Americans: A Nationally Representative Sample.

OBJECTIVE

To assess the prevalence of hearing loss and factors affecting hearing care use among Asian Americans, using the first nationally representative sample of Asian Americans.

STUDY

DESIGN

National cross-sectional survey.

SETTING

Ambulatory examination centers.

PATIENTS: Three thousand six hundred twelve adults (522 Asian American) aged 20 to 69 in the 2011 to 2012 National Health and Examination Survey with pure-tone audiometry.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): Percentage with hearing loss, undertaking a hearing test before the study, and hearing aid use. Hearing loss was defined as better hearing ear speech frequency pure-tone average ≥25 dBHL. Analyses incorporated sampling weights to account for complex sampling design.

RESULTS

The prevalence of hearing loss was 6.0% [95% CI 3.1-8.9%] among Asian Americans, comparable to White, Black, and Hispanic groups, and increased substantially with age (OR: 2.25 [95% CI: 1.6-3.2]). After adjusting for age and pure-tone average, Asian Americans with hearing loss were less likely to have received a hearing test compared with White (OR: 0.27 [95% CI: 0.20-0.36, p = <0.001]) and Black groups (OR: 0.26 [95% CI: 0.16-0.38, p<0.001]), less likely to use hearing aids compared with Whites (OR: 0.06 [95% CI: 0.01-0.64], p = 0.02), and less likely to self-report poor hearing compared with Whites (OR: 0.30 [95% CI: 0.10-0.90], p = 0.03). Among Asian Americans, using more non-English than English, being foreign-born, less education, being married, and not having insurance were associated with lower levels of receiving a hearing test.

CONCLUSION

The nationally representative sample of Asian Americans with hearing data suggests that hearing loss prevalence is similar to other races/ethnicities. However, hearing aid adoption by Asian Americans tends to be less frequent.