What Is Tinnitus
Tinnitus or ringing in the ears, is the sensation of hearing ringing. The noise can be intermittent or continuous, and can vary in loudness. It is often worse when background noise is low, so you may be most aware of it at night when you're trying to fall asleep in a quiet room
1
Symptoms
2
Causes
3
Tinnitus Diagnosis
4
Tinnitus Treatment
1 Symptoms
Symptoms
Tinnitus symptoms may include these types of phantom noises in your ears:1. Ringing
2. Buzzing
3. Roaring
4. Clicking
5. Hissing
6. Humming
The phantom noise may vary in pitch from a low roar to a high squeal, and you may hear it in one or both ears. In some cases, the sound can be so loud it can interfere with your ability to concentrate or hear external sound. Tinnitus may be present all the time, or it may come and go.
2 Causes
Causes
Tinnitus is not a disease but a symptom that can result from a number of underlying causes. A common cause of tinnitus is inner ear hair cell damage. Tiny, delicate hairs in your inner ear move in relation to the pressure of sound waves. This triggers cells to release an electrical signal through a nerve from your ear (auditory nerve) to your brain. Your brain interprets these signals as sound.If the hairs inside your inner ear are bent or broken, they can "leak" random electrical impulses to your brain, causing tinnitus. In many cases, an exact cause is never found. Other causes of tinnitus include
1. Age-related hearing loss
2. Noise-induced hearing loss. (or) Exposure to loud noise
3. Ear infections
4. Ear wax blockage
5. Meniere’s disease
6. Otosclerosis
7. Emotional stress
8. Exposure to certain medications
9. Head injury
10. Disease of the heart or blood vessels
11. Brain tumors
12. Depression
3 Tinnitus Diagnosis
Haring Assessment
Basic Audiological evaluation like Pure Tone Audiometry and Impedance Audiometry will perform to know the Hearing sensitivity status.Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI)
It assesses the degree of subjective discomfort associated with tinnitus, includes three sub-scales, functional, emotional, and catastrophic, with a total of 25 questions. Each item was recorded as “no” (0 points), “sometimes” (2 points), and “yes” (4 points), with scores added to calculate the total score.Tinnitogram
Tinnitus patients under went to evaluate the direction of tinnitus, pitch, and loudness. Residual inhibition (RI) and minimum masking level were also measured.
4 Tinnitus Treatment
Tinnitus Retraining Therapy
Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT) is a process of learning to cope with your tinnitus on a conscious and subconscious level. This technique has helped a lot of people.This therapy can be compared to the sound of raindrops falling on a roof being noticed when it first starts raining, but going unnoticed and put out of mind after some time.
Tinnitus Retraining Therapy requires close co-operation with hearing professionals. The therapy is employed at the perceived source of the tinnitus and aims to teach the brain to ignore it.
Tinnitus Retraining Therapy combines three significant therapeutic steps:
1. Extensive collection of information about the patient, including patient history and daily living habits.
2. Use of devices worn behind the ear and generating broad-band noise to divert attention of the patient away from the tinnitus.
3. Psychological therapy teaching the patient to ignore the tinnitus noise. This is combined with deep relaxation exercises and stress management. The object is the elimination of the patient's anxiety, so that the tinnitus is no longer perceived as a danger, thus diverting the concentration away from the tinnitus noise.
The end goal is complete habituation of the noise.
The duration of the treatment varies depending on the treatment facility involved.
Tinnitus masker
A tinnitus Masker is an electronic hearing aid device that genera tes and emits broad-band or narrow-band noise at low levels, designed to mask the presence of tinnitus.Such masking noise is also referred to as white noise. For an individual suffering from both hearing loss and tinnitus, the masker and the hearing aid can operate together as one instrument.