Determinants of Single and Multiple Sensory Impairments in an Urban Population

Objective: To describe the co-occurrence pattern and determinants of auditory, olfactory, visual, and gustatory impairment across the life spectrum of adults.

Study design: Cross-sectional analysis.

Setting: An urban population.

Subjects and method: In total, 1208 persons from the general adult population (age range, 25-74 years; 46.7% men) were included. Sensory impairments were assessed with validated tests. Alternating logistic regression was applied to characterize (1) the dependence of sensory impairments on selected independent variables and (2) the pairwise association between sensory impairments. The dependence of impairment grade (no to multisensory impairment) on the same set of independent variables was examined using ordinal logistic regression.

Results: The prevalence of single sensory impairment was 38.8%, of dual 27.3%, and of multisensory impairment 7.5%. Auditory impairment was the most frequent impairment type (43.9%), followed by olfactory (21.5%), gustatory (20.3%), and visual impairment (14.1%). Besides age and sex, social status (odds ratio [OR], 2.61; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.80-3.79), smoking status (OR, 1.45; 95% CI, 1.12-1.88), and diabetes (OR, 1.75; 95% CI, 1.16-2.63) were related to an elevated odds of moving from a lower into a higher impairment category.

Conclusions: The presence of certain risk factors, such as a low social status, diabetes, and smoking, appears likely to increase the risk of multisensory impairment.