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High Percentage of Patients with Chronic Pain Experience Tinnitus: Presented at AAO-HNSF

By Paula Moyer
Special to DG News

SAN DIEGO, CA -- September 25, 2002 -- More than half of patients who live with chronic pain also experience tinnitus, and the longer they live with pain, the more likely they are to have tinnitus, according to research reported here September 23^rd at the 106^th annual meeting of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation.

However, the study found that patients with chronic pain report less disability from the tinnitus than patients usually do.

Dr. Jon E. Isaacson, an assistant professor of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery at Pennsylvania State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, in Hershey, Pennsylvania, United States, said the high incidence of tinnitus among people with chronic pain warrants further study, and also warrants efforts to relieve these patients of one more stressor.

"Just because they report less severe disability [than tinnitus patients typically do] doesn't mean we shouldn't treat them," he said.

In a prospective non-randomised study, his team followed 72 consecutive patients who were seen in a chronic pain clinic. The patients responded to a survey and the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI). The investigators analysed the patients' demographic data, incidence and severity of tinnitus, and degree of handicap from tinnitus.

Among the patients completing the survey, 39 (54 percent) reported having tinnitus. Patients who had lived with chronic pain more than five years were generally more likely to experience tinnitus than patients who had chronic pain for fewer than five years. The mean THI score was 27 out of 100, a score that indicates mild tinnitus-related disability.

"Only four patients said the tinnitus was a severe handicap, which surprised us," Dr. Isaacson said. "We speculate that the patients are so involved with their pain issues, that [other issues] become secondary."

He added that their study raises a question. "What is it about these pain patients that they would have such a high incidence of tinnitus?" he asked. "In our next step, our group of researchers will try to address this question. We have proposed to do some imaging studies, specifically positron emission tomography [PET] scanning. We'd like to compare the brain function of pain patients and tinnitus patients to see if we can find an anatomical overlap between the two groups."

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