1. Can the tinnitus spectrum identify tinnitus subgroups?
- Author
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Esther Wiersinga-Post, Emile de Kleine, Karin M. Heijneman, Pim van Dijk, Science in Healthy Ageing & healthcaRE (SHARE), and Perceptual and Cognitive Neuroscience (PCN)
- Subjects
Adult ,Male ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Adolescent ,Hearing loss ,Audiology ,Spectrum (topology) ,Cohort Studies ,Speech and Hearing ,Tone (musical instrument) ,Tinnitus ,Young Adult ,lcsh:RC963-969 ,Audiometry ,medicine ,otorhinolaryngologic diseases ,Humans ,tinnitus diagnosis ,Hearing Loss ,Aged ,medicine.diagnostic_test ,Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health ,Effective management ,Audiogram ,Middle Aged ,lcsh:Otorhinolaryngology ,lcsh:RF1-547 ,Otorhinolaryngology ,lcsh:Industrial medicine. Industrial hygiene ,Audiometry, Pure-Tone ,Female ,medicine.symptom ,Psychology ,Psychoacoustics ,auditory threshold - Abstract
The tinnitus spectrum is a psycho-acoustic metric of tinnitus. Previous work found a tight relation between the spectrum and the tone audiogram. This suggests that the spectrum and the audiogram provide essentially the same information, and the added value of the spectrum is limited. In order to test whether the spectrum shows tinnitus characteristics that cannot be inferred from the audiogram, we re-examined the relation between the tinnitus spectrum and the tone audiogram, in a group of 80 tinnitus patients. We defined three subgroups of patients, using the shape of their tinnitus spectrum: (1) patients with a spectrum, monotonously increasing with frequency (2) patients with a distinct peak in their spectrum, (3) all other patients. Patients in group 3 typically showed low frequency tinnitus spectra. In all three groups, the largest hearing loss was at high frequencies (>2 kHz). The mean audiograms of group 1 and 2 were remarkably similar; group 3 had an additional hearing loss for the lower frequencies (
- Published
- 2013