Deans' stroke musings: Hearing aids do not reduce dementia-level impairment in older adults with mild cognitive impairment

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Monday, October 5, 2026

Hearing aids do not reduce dementia-level impairment in older adults with mild cognitive impairment

Really? What about these? Your incompetent? doctor won't know of these.

Treating hearing loss is associated with a decrease in risk of early death and dementia, studies show January 2024

Is there an association between hearing aid use and risk of dementia? April 2023

Hearing aids could delay dementia by five years, study suggests February 2021

The latest here:

Hearing aids do not reduce dementia-level impairment in older adults with mild cognitive impairment

Hearing aid intervention did not significantly reduce the 24-month incidence of dementia-level impairment among older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and moderate-to-severe hearing loss, according to the CHOICE randomised clinical trial published in JAMA Neurology.

However, hearing aid intervention was associated with a higher rate of cognitive improvement, a prespecified secondary outcome that the researchers said warranted cautious interpretation.

Ying Chen, MD, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China, and colleagues conducted the multicentre, open-label trial at 3 tertiary otology outpatient clinics and 3 community health stations in Shanghai. Among 21,908 adults aged 60 years or older assessed for eligibility, 703 participants with coexisting MCI and moderate-to-severe hearing loss were randomised 1:1 to hearing aid intervention or hearing care education.

Patients in the intervention group received free binaural behind-the-ear hearing aids, fitted by certified audiologists, while the control group received structured education on hearing care, chronic disease management, healthy lifestyle modifications, and cognitive decline prevention. The primary outcome was conversion from MCI to dementia-level impairment, defined as a Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) global score of 1 or more, at 24 months.

Among 703 randomised patients, 610 (86.77%) completed follow-up. Dementia-level impairment occurred in 3.09% of the hearing aid group versus 4.74% of the education group (risk difference = -2.07%; 95% confidence interval [CI], -4.74% to 0.61%; relative risk [RR] = 0.59; 95% CI, 0.25-1.38; P = .23). By contrast, cognitive improvement, defined as a CDR change from 0.5 to 0, occurred in 15.34% versus 2.36%, respectively (RR = 5.94; 95% CI, 2.46-14.37).

The researchers noted that the 24-month follow-up may have been relatively short for assessing dementia incidence, and the study used a narrower MCI population defined by CDR=0.5. Other limitations included reliance on the subjective CDR scale and potential confounding from the education provided to the control group.

“In this study, hearing aid intervention did not significantly reduce the incidence of dementia-level impairment at 24 months in older adults with coexisting hearing loss and mild cognitive impairment,” wrote Chen and colleagues. The authors proposed that biologically informed MCI subtyping and studies across diverse populations could help clarify the findings through improved generalisability and variable cognitive outcomes.

Reference: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2854483
SOURCE: JAMA Neurology