Source: Stroke  |  Posted 12 years ago

Otoscopy remains an important aid to diagnosis of tinnitus, argue Swiss doctors.

Using a case report of a 62-year old male patient who presented with acute, very loud tinnitus in the left ear, the doctors reviewed the treatment of acute tinnitus in the Swiss Medical Weekly.

They stressed the need to distinguish between auditory noises that the patient alone can hear, and noises that be located within the patient's body using some instrument, e.g. a stethoscope.

In their case history, the patient reported waking with a very loud noise and tickling in one ear. The sound was a high-frequency tone of varying strength. Pressure on the tragus made the noise louder.

The investigators write, "Aural microscopy sufficed to reveal the cause of the acute tinnitus, in the form of a small cockroach". The tinnitus ended on the removal of the cockroach.