Uptake of Colorectal Cancer Screening Among Deaf Adults in the United States

People with disabilities face challenges in access and utilization of healthcare resources in part due to the additional resources needed for their healthcare delivery. There is little information about colorectal cancer (CRC) screening uptake among deaf and hearing-impaired US adults. We evaluated the uptake of CRC screening among deaf US adults.

We used the 2018 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS 5 Cycle 2). Our study cohort included 2,049 respondents (weighted population size = 107,282,358) without a personal history of CRC who were at least 50 years old, reported whether they were deaf or not, and answered questions regarding their ever use of CRC screening modalities (fecal immunochemical test, sigmoidoscopy, or colonoscopy). We used logistic regression analyses to examine the association of deafness with ever being screened for CRC. We used survey weights in all analyses. We calculated odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI).

There were 202 deaf respondents (weighted population size = 9,994,286) and 1,847 people with normal hearing (weighted population size = 97,288,072). Deaf respondents were older (mean age 70.6 years versus 62.1 years) and were more likely to be male (n = 116 (59.9%)) versus female (n = 86 (40.1%), P = 0.004). CRC screening uptake was similar among deaf and normal hearing adults (n = 173 (80%) versus n = 1,493 (72.6%), respectively; unadjusted OR = 1.51; 95% CI: 0.80-2.83 and adjusted OR = 0.71; 95% CI: 0.32-1.60).

Hearing impairment was not found to be a barrier to the uptake of CRC screening among US adults.