What tests are needed for tinnitus? These five commonly used clinical

In clinical practice, the diagnosis of tinnitus requires appropriate examinations. So, what examinations are needed for tinnitus? The following five examination methods are most commonly used in clinical practice.

1. Tinnitus tone matching:

Generally, the pitch of tinnitus is related to the nature of the lesion. The frequency of tinnitus in conductive hearing loss is generally lower than that in sensorineural hearing loss, and its spectrum is often equivalent to the frequency range where the hearing loss is most obvious. The most common spectrum of tinnitus is 3500Hz~6900Hz, and more than half of them are narrowband noise. A few are pure tones, which are difficult to match with the tinnitus of some patients.

2. Tinnitus loudness matching:

The loudness of tinnitus measured clinically may not match the severity reported by the patient, and there is no correlation between the loudness of tinnitus and the type of disease. The frequency of the tinnitus may play a more important role than its loudness in terms of how disturbing it is to the patient.

3. The timbre of tinnitus:

There are 15 tinnitus-like words, among which "jin" is the most common, followed by "ji", "ken", "pi" and "xia". These five tinnitus-like words account for 83.6% of the total, and each tinnitus-like word has a corresponding frequency area.

4. Brainstem auditory evoked potential response:

The ABR of people with tinnitus is difficult to distinguish from that of deaf people, and ABR and electrocochlear electrogram alone cannot confirm the presence of tinnitus.

5. Otoacoustic emissions:

The results of the study on the relationship between tinnitus and otoacoustic emissions showed that: ① the frequency of tinnitus was inconsistent with the frequency of spontaneous otoacoustic emissions; ② 94.8% of patients with sensorineural hearing loss and tinnitus had a decrease or loss in the amplitude of distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAE) at the corresponding frequency. It can be considered that tinnitus in this type of patients is a signal of early pathological changes in hair cells, and otoacoustic emissions can detect and identify potential hearing changes caused by early cochlear lesions as early as possible; ③ In 42% of tinnitus patients with normal hearing, no DPOAE changes were found. Tinnitus may be caused by retrocochlear lesions or other factors such as mental factors.