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Abstract
Introduction Both hearing loss and dementia are associated with ageing, and it is thought that many individuals living with dementia also live with hearing loss. Despite the large comorbidity between these two disorders, there remains a clear lack of established guidelines in audiological services for assessing and managing patients living with dementia. This scoping review aims to examine whether specialist clinical pathways exist in audiology services for people living with coexisting hearing loss and dementia and to describe the specific components and features of these pathways. This review will provide up-to-date information on clinical practice, identifying any gaps in care and in the literature to inform future research hypotheses and best practice guidelines.
Methods and analysis The methods are reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews. The following electronic databases will be searched: CINAHL, EMBASE, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science. The eligibility criteria are defined according to the domains of the SPIDER (Sample, Phenomenon of Interest, Design, Evaluation and Research type) search strategy tool. Primary research studies and select grey literature sources (eg, practice guidelines) will be eligible if published within the last 15 years. Studies eligible for inclusion must contain adults living with suspected or confirmed dementia, their carers, or clinicians within audiology services. Initial searches were performed on 31 January 2024 and will be updated before completion and submission of the review. Article quality will be appraised using an established tool: the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. The results will be synthesised and reported in line with reflexive thematic analysis guidelines.
Ethics and dissemination No ethical issues are foreseen as the review will collect secondary data only. Findings will be reported by peer-reviewed publication and by national and international academic conferences.
- Dementia
- Review
- Audiology
- Cognition
Data availability statement
Data sharing not applicable as no datasets generated and/or analysed for this study.
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Footnotes
Contributors SMW: writing—original draft preparation; methodology. SC: writing—review and editing; methodology. HH: writing —review and editing; conceptualisation; funding acquisition. RVS: writing—review and editing; supervision. TD: writing—review and editing; conceptualisation. Ei H: writing—review and editing; methodology. El H: writing—review and editing; methodology; supervision.
Funding SW is supported by the University of Nottingham Excel in Science Internship Programme. EH, SC, RS and HH are supported by funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre (BRC-1215-20003) and NIHR Clinical Research Network East Midlands (UF18 and TF53). HH and EH are also supported by NIHR funding award PB-PG-2018-2111-016. In addition, EH is supported by an NIHR School for Primary Care Research Postdoctoral Fellowship (C091) and an NIHR Three Schools Dementia Career Development Award (102645/TSDRP/UNEH-ICDA-D17). The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR, or the Department of Health and Social Care.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research. Refer to the Methods section for further details.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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