Tinnitus

What is it

Tinnitus, or tinnitus, is the perception of a sound in the absence of sound stimulation. It consists of hearing annoying noises, sometimes even intense, on one or both ears, which in reality do not exist.

It may happen that, with the passage of time, tinnitus becomes centralized, in the sense that it is perceived inside the head.

The noises can be of various kinds: whistles, rustles, undertow of the sea, noise of chains, buzzing, sometimes the sound is variable and changes frequently. Other times, pulsed tinnitus appears, similar to the heartbeat.

Objective tinnitus is defined when the doctor can detect the sound perceived by the patient. Subjective tinnitus, on the contrary, is perceived only by the latter.

Diffusion

Recent surveys have calculated that about 10 percent of the adult population suffers from tinnitus, and in 5 percent of cases the symptom is reported as particularly annoying.

Only in 1% of cases tinnitus has a highly negative impact on quality of life.

Causes

The causes of tinnitus may be related to:

• vascular disorders (neuro-vascular conflict, tumors with vascular genesis such as tympanic glomus)
• disorders of muscular type (palatine myoclonus, spasm of the stapedius muscle and Eustace beante tuba).

The triggering event could also be a hearing impairment: these events generate a series of changes along the acoustic pathways, whose final event is a cortical thalamus dysrhythmia.

If these changes are the initial event, the maintenance and above all the discomfort generated by tinnitus implies an involvement of the limbic system, the part of our brain that regulates our emotions.

Treatment

In tinnitus therapy, the principle “the sooner you act, the better” applies. The most common treatment is Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT). It allows you to eliminate or greatly reduce the perception of tinnitus, regardless of the cause.

In practice, it transforms the disabling symptom into an irrelevant factor in daily life.

A calibrated sound is applied capable of inducing a regression of the anomalies along the acoustic pathways that generated the tinnitus, producing a consistent decrease of the same.

When present, TRT therapy should be combined with the treatment of emotional disorders.

The pharmacological therapies used are not specific for tinnitus (vasodilators, antistatics, local anesthetics). In recent years, drug therapy has been partially abandoned, while medicines useful to combat anxiety and depression that often derive from tinnitus remain valid.