title: Hearing threshold levels at age 70 years (65-74 years) in the unscreened older adult population of the United States, 1959-1962 and 1999-2006.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To provide hearing threshold percentiles from unscreened older adults for creating new Annex B reference standards.
  
  
  METHODS
  Percentiles are calculated, and 95% confidence intervals for medians from two U.S. surveys are compared graphically.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Median thresholds are lower (better) in the 1999-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey for men across all frequencies except 1 kHz. Results for women are similar; however, there is more overlap in confidence intervals across frequencies.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The prevalence of hearing impairment in older adults, age 70 years (65-74 years), is lower in 1999-2006 compared with 1959-1962, consistent with our earlier findings for younger adults.
authors.affiliation: Epidemiology and Statistics Program, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA. hoffmanh@nidcd.nih.gov
authors.forename: Howard J
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Hoffman
authors.forename: Robert A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Dobie
authors.forename: Chia-Wen
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Ko
authors.forename: Christa L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Themann
authors.forename: William J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Murphy
mesh_terms: D017677:Age Distribution; D000368:Aged; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D005260:Female; D006306:Health Surveys / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009749:Nutrition Surveys / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011304:Presbycusis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015995:Prevalence; D017678:Sex Distribution; D014481:United States