The Oldest Old-New Challenges and Responsibilities for Audiologists

 

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ABSTRACT

There is much use of the term “elderly” to describe people who are aged 65 and beyond. Suddenly, however, we are aware that the “beyond” now includes a significant population that was previously believed to contain relatively few persons on the extreme end of the life span, the octogenarians and the nonagenarians and those phenomenal few whom we admire, the centenarians. Demographic realities of the older population, however, indicate that the term elderly is now an inadequate generalization that conceals the diversity of a broad age range, sometimes spanning up to 30 or more years of life during a period of frequent and profound changes in the individual. This article focuses on the rapidly growing population aged 85 and over, for whom the term “oldest old” seems to be appropriate at present. Most of them have demonstrable changes of psychoacoustic characteristics in addition to central changes that we are still trying to understand, yet few are enthusiastic about using a hearing aid, in part, at least, because of limitations in their physical abilities to handle today's miniature instruments (e.g., hand tremors, arthritis). The need for more sophisticated, yet simply managed, alternative devices and for significant improvement in today's communication technology (e.g., the telephone) for this burgeoning population is clear.

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Moe BergmanEd.D. 

Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University

10 Wissotzky St., Tel-Aviv, Israel

Email: berg11@post.tau.ac.il