Tinnitus of the hypersensitive ear or the exogenous tinnitus
Abstract
Tinnitus belongs to the most important symptoms in neurootology besides of vertigo, nausea and hearing loss. In most of the cases still the origin of the tinnitus is not yet explainable. It is well known that tinnitus may arise in any part of the hearing pathways, i.e., the cochlea receptor as well the temporal lobe and projection.
Frequently tinnitus is combined with the above mentioned neurootological symptoms vertigo, nausea and hearing loss. Especially in patients growing over the age of 40, the sign of tinnitus is increasingly found. However, we have to discriminate between an endogenous and maskable tinnitus from and exogenous tinnitus, which is produced by distorted hearing pathway actions under the picture of the hypersensitive ear.
In the history already the patients suffering from exogenous tinnitus explain, that they must avoid external noise. Of course a thorough analysis of the hearing pathways is performed in the neurootological laboratory including speech audiometry, otoacoustic emissions, acoustic brainstem evoked potentials, acoustic late evoked potentials etc. Additionally to the basic failure in the acoustic dynamics of pure tone perception there also may be several signs of pathology within the hearing pathways between the ear and the cortex. Simultaneously the vestibular pathways are also investigated.
The findings are presented with respect to case reports as well as with statistics.