Flavours of Tinnitus

Dear Dr. Nagler,

I have learned through time, that people with tinnitus experience it in a lot of different ways. Sometimes they are so different, that one might think, that the "tinnitus" symptome covers a huge palette of different underlying diseases/malfunctionings in our health. I know this is no new wisdom, but I also know, that noone really has a definite answer.

Personally I experience two very distinct types of tinnitus.
Version 1: bilateral, "wholeheaded", loud, intrusive, nerve-noise-ish, and reactive version.
Version 2: Very clear tone in just one ear basically opposite to everything mentioned in version 1.

I'm skeptic for a cure for version 1, since it basically feels as if someone has to repair my whole brain.
I'm optimistic for a cure for version 2, because it feels like something just needs to be aligned correct.

My question is now:

Do you have an impression (from your medical background or patients history) about how many distinct underlying medical reasons for tinnitus exist? Or how many "flavours" of tinnitus exist?

Kind regards,
Mal

 

Excellent question, @Mal.

Here's how I look at it. The causes of tinnitus that can be corrected and in-so-doing correct the tinnitus are pretty much known. A trivial example would be a tense middle ear effusion. At the end of a thorough ENT and audiological evaluation, all such causes should have been ruled out. So at that point in time what you are left with is, for lack of a better term, a nuisance. It can be a HUGE NUISANCE (like mine was) or it can be a little nuisance. And given the current state of affairs in tinnitus research, what - if anything - you do about it depends not on what caused it but rather on how much of a nuisance it is!

So purely from a practical standpoint, my response to your question about how many different flavours of tinnitus there might be is that it really doesn't matter.

I am sure that others see it differently, but that's my take on the subject.

Dr. Stephen Nagler