Sick Leave and Disability Pension: Are They Associated with Hearing Loss? 

Jørgensen and colleagues (2022) recently published a paper examining the association between hearing loss and both physician-certified sick leave (>16 days) and disability pension.

These investigators used data collected as part of the Trøndelag Health Study (the HUNT Hearing Study) conducted in Norway. They followed 21,754 participants between the ages of 20 and 49 who had pure-tone air-conduction threshold and questionnaire data and were working at baseline (1996–1998).

Sick leave and pension data obtained from Statistics Norway were matched to the participants in the HUNT study and were examined through 2011.These data revealed associations between both hearing loss and sick leave and hearing loss and disability pension, but the relationship was stronger for disability pension.

The investigators reported that the association between hearing loss and sick leave was weak. These investigators also examined the relationships with the addition of tinnitus, as well as potential effect modifiers and confounders using stratified analyses.

Reference

Jørgensen AY, Aarhus L, Engdahl B. et al. (2022) Hearing loss, sick leave, and disability pension: findings from the HUNT follow-up study. BMC Public Health 22:1340.