Supporting adults with hearing loss in primary care: new NICE guideline

摘要

Your next patient is Mrs A, an older lady you know well who has chronic heart failure, diabetes, and a long list of medications. There’s so much to do in the next 10 minutes. Your task is even harder because she can’t hear you clearly. You keep having to repeat yourself. She has a hearing aid but it makes a whistling noise and she frowns while she fiddles with it. You don’t know much about hearing aids, and in any case there are more pressing medical issues to tackle today. Hearing loss drops off your agenda until next time. Understandable; but hearing may be near the top of Mrs A’s agenda. Better hearing could transform her day-to-day quality of life, from talking on the telephone to buying her shopping or watching the TV. She won’t have to worry about not hearing her name called in the surgery waiting room, nor will she need to book another appointment because she didn’t hear everything you said to her.GPs will be familiar with patients like Mrs A. It’s estimated that for the average GP about four consultations a day are related to hearing loss;1 from earwax or infection, more permanent hearing loss related to ageing or noise, underlying pathology such as middle ear disease, or as part of a systemic illness such as autoimmune or neurological disease. A new National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guideline on the management of hearing loss in adults has important, practical messages for GPs and primary care teams, which should make a real difference for our patients with this common and distressing condition.2 In this article we outline the scale of the problem, some of the key guideline recommendations relevant to GPs, and consider how we can improve GPs’ awareness and training …