Tinnitus Facts, Theories, and Treatments (1982) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 1-9
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In some cases tinnitus exists because there is actually a source of acoustic energy located somewhere in the head and neck area -- a contracting muscle, a clicking jaw, a defective vein or artery, etc -- that can also be heard by a second party, with or without the aid of special devices.
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A recent British survey indicates that about 1 percent of the general population has severe, occasionally debilitating tinnitus; were this percentage an accurate estimate of prevalence in the United States, there would be about 2.5 million Americans afflicted with severe tinnitus. At the other extreme, it may be that nearly everyone experiences a mild form of tinnitus at one time or another in life and thus that mild episodes of tinnitus are "normal" in the sense that an occasional backache or pimple is normal.
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From page 3... ...
In the mid-1970s a group of hearing specialists at the University of Oregon Medical School developed a device for generating a masking sound that could be mounted in a standard hearing aid chassis. This tinnitus masker was later combined with a hearing aid in the same chassis, and this combination was called a tinnitus instrument.
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From page 4... ...
Still less conservative estimates involve excluding both this 25 percent and those people who were given a recommendation for one of the three devicesmasker, aid, or instrument -- but who did not purchase one after the trial period. Depending upon which of these increasingly less conservative denominators is used, between about 42 percent and 83 percent of the respondents to the Oregon clinic's questionnaire report either total or partial relief from their tinnitus through use of the recommended devices.
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An obvious parallel exists with hearing aids. Evidence is accumulating that the levels and durations experienced by many wearers of hearing aids may eventually cause additional hearing loss, yet few hearing professionals regard that risk (or inevitability)
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also reported on a patient whose ear emitted a high-pitched tone that was audible to a 1 but herself. She, and the father mentioned previously, had circumscribed hearing losses in the ~tral region of their emissions.
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For inclusion in the definition, no criterion of severity, loudness, annoyance, or other characteristic of the tinnitus need be met. A distinction not made by this definition, but which will eventually have to be drawn, is between the elementary sensory experiences of the tinnitus sufferer and the organized perceptual experiences of the hallucinating mental patient.
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About equal percentages (9-10 percent) reported tinnitus with and without apparent hearing impairment, fewer reported unilateral tinnitus than tinnitus in both ears or "in the
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From page 9... ...
. While the various official attempts to estimate tinnitus prevalence are subject to various procedural criticisms, the resulting estimates do imply two things: that the magnitude of the tinnitus problem has not been appreciated and that effective treatment of tinnitus has not been available.
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