Citation

Lee W, Chang Y, Shin H, Ryu S. J. Clin. Med. 2020; 9(5): ePub.

Affiliation

Department of Clinical Research Design & Evaluation, SAIHST, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul 06351, Korea.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/jcm9051415

PMID

32397655

Abstract

: Hearing loss (HL) has been related to cardiovascular risk factors as well as prevalence of cardiovascular disease itself. We evaluated the association of HL with overall, injury-related, and cardiovascular mortality. A cohort study included 580,798 Korean adults (mean age: 39.7) who attended a screening exam between 2002 and 2016 with a follow-up of up to 17 years. HL was defined as a pure-tone average of thresholds at 0.5, 1.0, and 2.0 kHz ≥25 dB (decibels) in the better ear and further categorized into mild (25-<40 dB) and moderate-to-severe (≥40 dB). Overall and cause-specific mortality was ascertained through linkage to national death records. During median follow-up of 8.4 years, 6581 overall deaths, 977 cardiovascular deaths, and 1161 injury-related deaths were identified. Compared to participants with normal hearing, multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) for overall mortality among participants with mild and moderate-to-severe HL were 1.13 (1.05-1.21) and 1.30 (1.16-1.46), respectively. Corresponding HRs (95% CIs) for cardiovascular mortality were 1.32 (1.10-1.58) and 1.53 (1.16-2.01), respectively, and corresponding HRs (95% CIs) for injury-related mortality were 1.03 (0.81-1.31) and 1.64 (1.13-2.36), respectively. In this large cohort, HL was positively and independently associated with overall, cardiovascular, and injury-related mortality. A significantly elevated risk of cardiovascular mortality started from mild HL.

Language: en

Keywords

cardiovascular mortality; cohort study; hearing loss; injury-related mortality; overall mortality