37% of Adult Canadians Have Experienced Tinnitus in the Past Year

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-003-x/2019003/article/00001-eng.htm

This is - surprisingly - a new report on tinnitus in Canada - posted March 20, 2019. I haven't had a chance to go over it all in depth - the data - but what's there is rather interesting.

"An estimated 37% of adult Canadians (9.2 million) had experienced tinnitus in the past year (Table 1). It was bothersome for 7%, affecting aspects of their lives such as sleep, concentration and mood. Although men were more likely than women to have tinnitus, they were also more likely to report that it was not bothersome. Younger individuals aged 19 to 29 years were more likely than individuals in the older age groups to have experienced tinnitus in the past year but also report that they were not bothered by the condition."

37%? Wow! The numbers I've always seen have been 10% of general population - with 1-2% being intrusive. Well this is good news in that I've been planning on trying to get a national policy for dealing with tinnitus being put into place in Canada so this data will help immensely. It's just a shame there's no corresponding economic data on what it's costing society in terms of treatment, lost revenue, GDP, etc. It must be significant.

Now I'm really curious to see what the most recent data in other countries are. Could it be they've underestimating how many people have tinnitus? Or maybe it's just more prevalent these days with headphones/earbuds and smartphones, TVs, gaming, et al. and they need to start reassessing just how large a problem it is.

 

This is not surprising considering how loud everything is these days. I can't even go into a restaurant anymore without ear plugs!