What is Tinnitus?
Tinnitus can also be defined as the patient’s perception of a sound without an acoustic stimulus. This voice can have different tones, features and characters. The sound that is often heard as ringing is sometimes described as humming, bell, wind or whistling, machine noise, rustling, pulse sounds. Tinnitus is considered a symptom rather than a disease and is treated as such. It is the most common symptom of the auditory system. These complaints may be severe enough to cause psychological problems or significantly impair the quality of life, and in some people, tinnitus may come and go within a few minutes.
There is no external sound source that can cause the sound a person hears in tinnitus. Tinnitus is sometimes referred to as a “ghost sound” because it is a sound that is only inside the person’s head and cannot be perceived from the outside. This complaint may follow a debilitating course over time. In some severe cases, the ringing sound can reach levels that drown out environmental sounds. As a result of this situation, the person may be prone to psychiatric disorders such as stress, anxiety and depression.
Tinnitus can be divided into unilateral or bilateral. Another classification is made as objective or subjective tinnitus. The sound caused by tinnitus, called objective tinnitus, can be heard by both the person himself and other people. This condition usually indicates an abnormality with the blood vessels in the ear. In tinnitus, which is caused by vascular origin, a characteristic sound occurs with every beat of the heart.
Objective tinnitus is a rare type of tinnitus. The majority of tinnitus cases are detected as subjective tinnitus. People with subjective tinnitus type tinnitus hear sounds such as buzzing and ringing that can only be perceived by them.
What are the symptoms of tinnitus?
Tinnitus is a condition in which a thin and high-pitched sound is heard in the ear. In tinnitus, which is quite common, a sound similar to a bell is heard. No one other than the patient complaining of subjective tinnitus hears this sound. The frequency of sounds, which can be heard in the form of humming and hissing as well as bells, varies from person to person. In cases of tinnitus, which can be severe in some people, symptoms such as difficulty in concentration and hearing loss may be added to the symptom table. The complaint of tinnitus may be present constantly or it may have a temporary course. In objective tinnitus patients, the resulting sound is rhythmic and heard as wind noise. This sound, which occurs in coordination with heartbeats, is also called pulsatile tinnitus.
In general, the loudness of the sound caused by tinnitus varies throughout the day. The complaint of tinnitus, which is felt more intensely at night due to the decrease in environmental noise, can be severe enough to cause hearing loss in some people. For example, people working in a noisy industrial area experience hearing loss as a result of exposure to a sound of approximately 4000 Hz. These people experience tinnitus at a tone close to the sound frequency they were exposed to after the trauma.
Tinnitus is a common complaint, especially among people serving as military personnel. High noise sources such as gun firing and explosions in working conditions are the main cause of tinnitus in these people. Apart from military personnel, tinnitus may also occur among movie industry workers as a result of close exposure to stage effects.
Apart from hearing loss, increased hearing perception, called hyperacusis, is among the complaints that may accompany tinnitus. In cases of hyperacusis, patients hear sounds such as a door closing, a chair moving, or a book cover closing, very intensely and loudly, and even such normal environmental sounds can become unbearable at times.
What are the causes of tinnitus?
Normal tinnitus lasts less than a week and five minutes. This is a very common situation that everyone experiences from time to time. But pathological tinnitus lasts longer than the specified period. Conditions such as constant tinnitus are often accompanied by hearing loss. Subjective tinnitus heard only by the patient may have many causes. While earwax can cause tinnitus, long-term exposure to loud noise, a foreign object, perforation in the eardrum, otitis media, fluid accumulation in the middle ear, damage to inner ear cells, and hardening of the bones and joints in the middle ear can also cause tinnitus. In addition, hearing loss, allergies, blood pressure changes, Meniere’s disease, diabetes, anemia, menopause, hormone changes, traumas in the head and neck area, thyroid disease.
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Kenan Selçuk TUNCAY
Otolaryngologist