Abstract
With the inauguration of the anti-aging center at our hospital, anti-aging dock, we established health check-up services focused on hearing issues in December 2009. During the last 7 months until June 2010, 96 out of 216 people (44.4%) visiting the anti-aging dock were optionally registered with the “anti-aging hearing dock program”. Most of the visitors were between 70 and 79 years old, followed in frequency by those who were between 60 and 69 years old. The main motivation of the visitors was self-recognition of hearing troubles in their daily life. Multiple regression analysis showed that the brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity (PWV) was related to the hearing threshold at 8kHz. Furthermore, the intimal plus medial thickness of the carotid artery (IMT) was closely correlated to the hearing thresholds at 4 and 8kHz. These findings suggest that arteriosclerosis is strongly involved in the hearing loss at higher frequencies in elderly people.
