Risk of accident: those who cannot hear well have accidents more often

Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

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Those who do not hear well have accidents more often - especially in traffic, but also at work or at home. This also applies to people who only have mild hearing problems. For example, you often notice cars approaching from behind too late.

American scientists have now investigated how great the influence of hearing is in this regard. Harrison Lin's team from the University of California at Irvine evaluated the information from 275,000 people.

They had indicated how well they could hear at their own discretion. 2.8 percent reported that they had been injured in an accident in the previous three months.

The risk of accidents in traffic is more than twice as high

Compared to participants who rated their hearing as “excellent” or “good”, the accident risk for respondents with “minor” hearing problems was 60 percent higher. With "medium" hearing problems, the risk was increased by 70 percent, with "larger" problems by as much as 90 percent. This relationship was most pronounced in traffic accidents. Here, the risk of severe hearing problems was even increased by 240 percent.

Deaf people are more vigilant

Interestingly, people who were deaf had no more accidents than people with good hearing. The researchers conclude that they are aware of the danger, so they are more cautious.

Get hearing aids early on

If you have poor hearing, you should get a hearing aid as early as possible. Otherwise the corresponding areas of perception in the brain threaten to atrophy. If this is the case, the corresponding frequency range can then no longer be reactivated even by a hearing aid.

Five percent in Germany are severely hard of hearing

According to the German Association of the Hard of Hearing, around 19 percent of adults in Germany are hard of hearing. This also includes people with mild hearing impairment.

This manifests itself, for example, in the fact that it is difficult for them to perceive the chirping of birds or they have difficulty distinguishing the sounds "f" and "s". Approximately five percent of the adult population are extremely hard of hearing.

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