As the term of Presbycusis or age-related hearing loss will be used interchangeably to describe the process of hearing loss throughout the study, this part of the introduction will highlight some salient characteristics of this process. The phrase of presbycusis is used to describe the clinical manifestations of ageing on the Auditory System and frequently has been blamed as the most common cause of hearing impairment in older people, causing a difficulty of understanding during verbal communication. The process of presbycusis is a biological phenomenon that grows significantly while people age and can have a profound repercussion on their lives, starting usually from 20-30 years of age and may become socially uncomfortable from the 40-50 years. However, the discomfiture generated by misunderstanding other people will encourage social withdrawal, isolation, psychological negative experiences of loneliness, anxiety and the most remarkable depression. Particularly in older person presbycusis influences the balance, placing them at a high risk of falls (Hidalgo, 2008).
According to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health [ICF] of the World Health Organization (as cited in Veras and Mattos, 2007), the prevalence of presbycusis, is projected, approximately 24.5 million of people with some form of disability, that is a
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Those studies have the advantage of the immediate understanding of the significance of the problem, but there is the disadvantage that a quantitative foundation is missing. When audiometric tests are carried out to test the hearing of the elderly, which consists in the detection of the lowest level or softest sound (in dB HL) the prevalence of hearing loss appears to be much higher, thus closer to one in six or one in seven (EHIMA,