Care for Hearing Loss and Best Principles of Dementia Care: The Time is Right for Inclusion

To the Editor:Once considered a benign aspect of aging, recent evidence suggests hearing loss is the largest modifiable risk factor for incident dementia.1 As many as 6 in 10 older adults with Alzheimer’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease–related dementias (AD/ADRD) have hearing loss,2 an underdiagnosed, progressive condition that limits communication and engagement with surroundings. There is no cure to return “normal” hearing. Instead, intervention involves providing amplification devices (eg, hearing aids) that manipulate and boost certain sounds in tandem with environmental modifications and communication strategies to help the brain “fill in” missed auditory information.