A study of tinnitus profile

Abstract

There are hardly any reports on studies related to nature and types of tinnitus carried out in India, nor their seem to be any specific questionnaries developed for studying tinnitus. This prompted the authors to undertake the study of tinnitus profile with the help of a specially developed questionnaire 35 subjects with tinnitus were studied. The obtained data indicates that the severity of tinnitus is independent of type and degree of hearing loss. It was further found that severity of tinnitus did not vary significantly with subjective complaints, the tinnitus neither decreased nor increased with factors like stress, exersion, tension, presence of noise, rest and other bodily factors. As the serverity of tinnitus increases it was found that the disturbance in sleep, annoyance, irritation and subjects botheration increased. However, there were no sex variations observed on these factors. Most of the subjects could not recognize tinnitus quality interms of pitch, changes in pitch and loudness of their tinnitus. Therefore, if these factors are further studied on larger number of patients with different otological conditions, it may throw light on clinical management of tinnitus.