Combined Vision and Hearing Impairment is Associated with Frailty in Older Adults: Results from the West China Health and Aging Trend Study

Objective: Hearing and vision loss have been independently associated with frailty in older adults, but the relationship between concurrent hearing and visual impairment (dual sensory impairment) and frailty is not well understood. Therefore, we aimed to examine whether dual sensory impairment is associated with frailty in older adults.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was based on the data from the West China Health and Aging Trend (WCHAT) study of community-dwelling individuals aged 60 years and older. Frailty status was evaluated by the FRAIL scale and categorized as robust, prefrail and frail. Hearing and vision functions were based on self-report. We used multinomial regression models to explore the association between dual sensory impairment and frailty.

Results: Of 3985 participants, 1655 (41.5%) were male and the median age was 66 years (interquartile range: 61-68). Overall, 7.6% of participants reported hearing impairment only, 32.7% reported vision impairment only, and 28.6% reported dual sensory impairment. The prevalence of prefrailty and frailty was 60.7% and 6.1%, respectively. After adjustment for confounding variables, results from the multinomial regression analysis showed that dual sensory impairment was significantly associated with greater odds of becoming frail (OR = 2.17, 95% CI = 1.40-3.38) compared with no impairment. When stratified by gender, dual sensory impairment was significantly associated with frailty in women (OR = 2.42, 95% CI = 1.40-4.20) but not in men (OR = 1.30, 95% CI = 0.58-2.91).

Conclusion: Older adults with dual sensory impairment are more likely to be frail than those with no impairment, suggesting that interventions to improve sensory function may potentially help reduce the risk of frailty in older adults.