The impact of hearing impairment and hearing aid use on progression to mild cognitive impairment in cognitively healthy adults: An observational cohort study

Abstract

Introduction: We assessed the association of self-reported hearing impairment and hearing aid use with cognitive decline and progression to mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Methods: We used a large referral-based cohort of 4358 participants obtained from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center. The standard covariate-adjusted Cox proportional hazards model, the marginal structural Cox model with inverse probability weighting, standardized Kaplan-Meier curves, and linear mixed-effects models were applied to test the hypotheses. Results: Hearing impairment was associated with increased risk of MCI (standardized hazard ratio [HR] 2.58, 95% confidence interval [CI: 1.73 to 3.84], P =.004) and an accelerated rate of cognitive decline (P