So for anyone that has the knowledge to answer, is it possible to have Tinnitus but not have hearing loss or damage? Now obviously when I mean Tinnitus I mean more then just a night at a concert.
Yes it is possible to have tinnitus without hearing loss.
e.g.
Noise-induced tinnitus: a comparison between four clinical groups without apparent hearing loss.
Abstract
The number of people with normal hearing thresholds seeking medical help for tinnitus and other hearing problems is increasing. For diagnostic purposes, existence/nonexistence of lesions or combinations of lesions in the inner ear not reflected in the audiogram was evaluated with advanced hearing tests applied to tinnitus patients with certain backgrounds, including noise exposure. For forty-six patients with pronounced tinnitus, and other symptoms, tentative diagnoses were established, including judgments of the influence of four causative factors: (1) acoustic trauma, (2) music, (3) suspected hereditary, and (4) nonauditory, for example, stress or muscular tension. They were analyzed with a test battery sensitive to lesions involving the outer hair cells, damage from impulse noise, and dysfunction of the efferent system. There were significant differences in test results between groups with individuals with the same most likely causative factor. Most patients claiming acoustic trauma had a specific type of result, 'hyper-PMTF' (psychoacoustical modulation transfer function), and abnormal test results of the efferent system. Everyone in the hereditary group had dysfunction of the efferent system. All patients working with music, except one, had some abnormality, but without specific pattern. The nonauditory group mostly had normal test results. The investigation shows that it is possible to diagnose minor cochlear lesions as well as dysfunction of the efferent system, which might be causing the tinnitus. Those abnormalities could not be detected with routine audiological tests. Malfunctioning caused by impulse noise is an obvious example of this. These findings facilitate choice of treatment, rehabilitation programs, and medicolegal decisions.
Tinnitus in individuals without hearing loss and its relationship with temporomandibular dysfunction.
Abstract
Research has shown that dysfunction of the temporomandibular joint is often associated with tinnitus.
AIM:
To characterize tinnitus in individuals with normal hearing and search for a possible relationship with Temporomandibular Disorders (TMD). Study design: prospective and cross-sectional.
MATERIALS AND METHODS:
The participants included 20 adults of both genders with tinnitus and normal hearing thresholds on audiometry. We studied tinnitus psychoacoustic characteristics and employed the checklist of TMD signs and symptoms from the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI).
RESULTS:
The high pitch, continuous and bilateral tinnitus was the most frequent. Upon acuphenometry, the average tinnitus pitch reported by the subjects was 8.6 kHz and the average loudness was 14.1 dBSL. The degree of discomfort caused by tinnitus was mild. We observed that the higher the pitch, the lower was the loudness and the higher was the THI score. We found that 90% of the patients had at least one TMD sign or symptom.
CONCLUSIONS:
The most common was the high pitch, continuous and bilateral tinnitus; 90% of patients had at least one sign or symptom of TMD and there was no correlation between the tinnitus and acuphenometry, THI and the TMD checklist.
High-frequency tinnitus without hearing loss does not mean absence of deafferentation
Abstract
A broad consensus within the neuroscience of tinnitus holds that this audiologic condition is triggered by central deafferentation, mostly due to cochlear damage.
The absence of audiometrically detectable hearing loss however poses a challenge to this rather generalizing assumption. The aim of this study was therefore to scrutinize cochlear functioning in a sample of tinnitus subjects audiometrically matched to a normal hearing control group. Two tests were applied: the Threshold Equalizing Noise (TEN) test and a pitch scaling task. To perform well on both tasks relatively normal functioning of inner hair cells is a requirement. In the TEN test the tinnitus group revealed a circumscribed increment of thresholds partially overlapping with the tinnitus spectrum. Abnormal slopes were observed in the pitch scaling task which indicated that tinnitus subjects, when presented with a high-frequency stimulus, relied heavily on input derived from lower-frequency inner hair cells (off-frequency listening).
In total both results argue for the presence of a deafferentation also in tinnitus subjects with audiometrically normal thresholds and therefore favour the deafferentation assumption posed by most neuroscientific theories.
Basically usually tinnitus is accompanied by at least some degree of hearing loss, but not always.
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