How Is Tinnitus Confirmed?

I've never had mine confirmed and never had any need to, but how is it confirmed that you have it?

 

How does the doctor check/know you have it?

 

Oh yes. You will certainly know when you have tinnitus. And when your doctor says as most of them do, there's nothing can be done . There's no cure , just have to learn to live with it..well one thing is this forum is the best thing that I have found. Chatting to the wonderfull people on this forum has helped me deal with it. Good sound advice and positive attitude, has helped me move forward , and to get on with my life. Yes tinnitus does bother me me at times . But a positive attitude has helped me live my life. One thing is for sure it has made me stronger as a person I'm not going to let this tinnitus get the better of me. I'm sure there is a cure not far away, and we will All be free of tinnitus.

 

Hi @tinnitussufferer: One thing to remember is tinnitus is not a disease or medical disorder. It is a symptom. The cause/condition can be one of many: ear infection, hearing loss (at regular frequencies or so high that the loss is not detected except by special testing), TMJ, presence of acoustic nueroma, tumors, etc.. So "confirming" tinnitus would be like "confirming" pain, which also is a symptom. If you have pain, you know it. Same with tinnitus. What you often don't know is the cause.

Also: Another great cat avatar, @Richard zurowski!

 

If you even have to think to see a doc to have it confirmed...you have tinnitus....

 

You tell the doctor you hear noise in your ear/ears. He says: "oh you have tinnitus." However the more complicated problem is discovering what causes your T. If you for example had a tumour growing on your hearing nerve they would see that in a scan and possibly remove it as well as hopefully curing your T. But for most people sadly no one knows what is causing their T and so no one knows how to stop it.

 

So if you say you have tinnitus and somebody doesn't believe you because they cant hear it or see it, how do you prove it to them? There is no way to prove it?

 

No, there is no way to prove it. If there was then more of us in the West at least would probably be eligible for disability support which would cost our Governments which would, funnily enough, prove a spur to better research efforts.

 

You can't really. Outdated audiograms are all we have and they are for hearing loss not T.

 

Unless you have some kind of physical injury, hearing loss, or some other disease, it's hard to acutally prove that you have tinnitus because otherwise it's just in your head. Sadly in most cases, MRI, CT scans, EEG tests show nothing.

 

The issue of proving that one has T is VERY important. One can be accused that he doesn't have it, while that person may have catastrophic, therefore disabling T. A way to prove T would be fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) or qEEG (quantitative electro encephalogram). The machines are very rare in the world. In my country there is no fMRI or qEEG. About qEEG machines, if my information is correct, in Europe there are only two: one in Belgium and one in Switzerland.
There should be at least a fMRI and a qEEG in every country. I tried to get together the members of this forum (to which members of other forums can join) to make a petition to World Health Organization (I couldn't think of a better suited organization, but it may be a better one) to order to countries to buy such machines, so the T sufferers are believed, so abuse (such: "your T is only in your mind", or "you lie that you have T") is prevented, and also, in case of catastrophic T (which can be shown on these machines), the sufferers to be able to go on disability.
Catastrophic T is the worst disability I know. I can't think of a worse one.
Once one has catastrophic T, he cannot sleep. Once you cannot sleep, for many many days in a row, you become so tired that you become dysfunctional. Can't do anything. If a person with catastrophic T takes drugs in order to help him fall asleep, those drugs do not wear of at exactly 6 or 7 am the next morning, so they remain drowsy (so not functional like a normal person for more) even during the day.
The search for a cure is in it's initial stages, from what I know, as if T is a problem that occurred a short time ago, when, in fact, Hippocrates had it.
If finding a cure it's so hard, how about coming with some ways to put it in evidence, so sufferers can go on disability?
But I see that even this issue is not given decent attention.
Who is supposed to bring us help, if we do not ask for help.
Who is supposed to tap on the shoulders the people on top of medical hierarchy to ask them: "Hey, what about us?" if we, the sufferers, don't do it?
If I am wrong somewhere, please show me where I am wrong and take me out of the dark! In the meantime I just can't believe the lack of wish of the members of this forum to unite and try to make things move. Yes, we appear in statistics, but nobody is in a hurry to do anything for us.
If anybody thinks that I am repeating these thing so I can go on disability based on T, is terribly wrong.
I could go on disability based on a "psychiatric disorder" ANYTIME. The bribe I would have to pay to the doctor is not even a significant amount. It's just that I am thinking about all of us.
The only problem I would have in going on disability because of a psychiatric disorder is the humiliation. A person with severe psychiatric disorder may not consider his diagnosis something demeaning, but a person like me, who has, as the latest diagnosis just "recurrent depression", to retire based on a false diagnosis (schizophrenia, or paranoia, or something like that), I find that very demeaning, and it's a potential door for more abuse (more insults).

 

tinnitus patients reliably show structural brain abnormalities on very specialized tests, but they are only performed for academic research, because there's literally no clinical utility in them.

 

Clinics' job is not only to cure the sick people when the diagnosis is clear and the cure is possible, but to diagnose people with severe and incurable afflictions, and make that diagnosis official. So I consider identifying a severe T case, so a case of a serious affliction, a job that belongs to the clinics, part of what they have to do.

That is the problem, that tinnitus sufferers are treated only as interesting cases to study academically, some interesting guinea pigs with an interesting abnormal brain activitiy, not as PEOPLE which, after they served as didactic material in an academic research, go home and have to live with this terrible affliction.

 

Sure, but the diagnostic criteria for tinnitus are pretty clear and don't require any fancy imaging. The imaging is really just there to:
* identify rare, serious causes (tumors)
* identify anatomical abnormalities which might be correctable (vascular loops)
http://www.aafp.org/afp/2004/0101/p120.html

I'm sorry you've had such negative experiences with doctors; mine have been a mixed bag, but I've definitely found a lot of compassion and sympathy along the way.

Much of this comes down to affluence and luck. If you're in a metropolitan area and can afford to see out-of-network specialists, then you're more likely to find practitioners who spend more time with you and take more personal interest in your welfare. If you're in a rural area on a bad medical plan, then it's much harder to find that interest -- and this is true for anyone walking in to any doctor for any condition.

That said, this is still a poorly understood symptom, and when there isn't the unusual case with a clear diagnosis of cause and treatment plan, "live with this the best you can" is really the only advice that anyone can give you.

 

I would have to travel abroad, to benefit from the knowledge of better specialists. This very T prevents me from going abroad, cause with respect to money...I've already spent a small fortune, I guess I could save the required amount.

The intelligence of the world is coagulated around other subjects and T doesn't get enough attention, this has to chance. I just can't believe that if all the medical scientists would seriously put their mind to it, they couldn't solve this mistery, that is above human intelligence to understand T, I think it's a problem of lack of interest.
Awareness must be brought not only among people who mush be warned about the dangers of loud noises, but to people in charge with the health of the people.
But what expectations to have from Homo Sapiens Sapiens, when it's dedicating way more money toward the destruction of people (weapons) rather than treating/curing people. Humans are not "human".

 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763414001389

This 2014 article highlights an important point about all research papers which is that if you look at all the research for any given topic, you find conflicting results. You can find evidence for anything you like. More specifically, the article mentions that: Therefore, evidence for tinnitus-related morphological changes in the central auditory system is equivocal.

Overall, presently there is only sporadic and insufficient evidence of changes in grey matter and white matter tracts in the hypothesised regions, which do not allow us to come to firm conclusions as to their direct involvement in tinnitus pathophysiology.

Overall, the evidence for structural abnormalities in tinnitus is unconvincing

 

tinnitus is a brain problem like nerve pain or psychological illnesses, all of these are hard to cure. The brain is the most complicated thing about us. If it could be reverse engineered so easily we could make robots like us. We cannot even begin to take apart a living brain for ethical reasons.

 

You are absolutely 100% correct. I would also add there is another possibility to diagnose tinnitus, by MEG or Magnetoencephalography.
There are some people who think they know things and talk absolute nonsense.
The world is slowly changing and in 100 years you will see these types of tests as standard procedures in medical diagnosis, just like an Xray machine is used today. Then they will be like, how the heck did we let these people go walking undiagnosed! I think if ATEOS was here, he would agree with me.

It is very easy to diagnose T on a simple EEG that is then run thru a software mathematical Matlab algorithm - to quantitize it and display it on a 3D brain mapping Atlas using Brodmann areas to clearly show tinnitus hyperactivity and intensity over the left, right, or both auditory cortexes (as well as other limbic areas).
This is done in only a select places in the world, one of them being in Sonimodul Neurosurgical Clinic in Switzerland. Another is the Brain2N tinnitus clinic in Belgium. There are many other places that have this technology available, but are authorized to use it only for research purposes. In fact I have an MEG machcine close to where I live in Canada. I actually went there and asked if they could scan my brain and diagnose me, but they refused because Health Canada does not authorize them to use if for CLINICAL purposes- RESEARCH ONLY. In fact there are several MEG machines in Toronto but none of them are authorized to use for tinnitus diagnosis, but used to diagnose Parkinsons and Epilepsy, to name a few.
So the question again comes back to your original one @Dana .

 

@tinnitussufferer
A cure for brain T (cause there are many other types, with an etiology that has nothing to do with the brain) could be bumped into even if all the secrets of the brain haven't been unveiled (which I believe it's impossible, yes, I don't think that man will ever understand the whole functioning of the brain)
"Where is a will there is a way". I haven't seen much will, that's the problem. Because of lack of interest!
"T is an abnormal hyperactivity of the neurons"? That is just pathetic! I could have told you the same thing based only on the knowledge I have acquired in 7th grade and a tiny bit of logic.

 

What if it is clicking instead of ringing? Is that still T?

 

Very impressive knowledge. My respect, @dan

 

@Avabelle
The clicking, as any other noise that we hear in out head without an external noise enters in the definition of tinnitus. But of course has a completely different etiology than the "eeeeeeeeee" T.
I heard that clicking can be cause by ETD (Eustachian tubes dysfunction), tympanic myoclonus, as well as soft palate myoclonus, which are other neurological problems than neurons hyperactivity, of course.

 

how do you know this?

 

@tinnitussufferer
Until @dan finds the exact source to show it for you, I can guarantee that he has been studying the subject for a loooooong time and I can confirm, as a graduate of bioinformatics, that Matlab is one of the main programming languages used in medicine, so what he is saying "rings" true, (no) pun intended.

 

First I researched it, then I done it.

 

well the article i mentioned clearly states that there is insufficient evidence

 

@tinnitussufferer What I like best about T research is how the various theories contradict each other. That gives me "a lot of hope".

 

Nothing impressive, I just did my homework

 

OK @tinnitussufferer , I took a look at your article and you know what it took me 30 seconds to find the reason this study proved inconclusive:

"We conclude that, at present, the overall evidence for structural abnormalities specifically related to tinnitus is poor."

And the reason, my friend, is because tinnitus is not a structural brain problem, but a functional one. Hence the need for diagnostic machines such as fMRI (the f stands for FUNCTIONAL).
However, I do believe this was an important study because we eliminated yet another thing tinnitus is NOT.