Clinical characteristics and psychoacoustic analysis of acute and chronic subjective tinnitus

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to understand the demographics, clinical characteristics, and psychoacoustic status of subjective tinnitus patients to explore the factors associated with acute and chronic tinnitus in the general hospitals of Shanghai. METHODS: A cross‐sectional study was conducted to investigate the clinical characteristics and psychoacoustic status of subjective tinnitus patients with history greater than 1 month. Data were collected during January 2021 and January 2022 from eight general hospitals in five districts of Shanghai, China. All patients accepted questionnaires and acoustic examination, then SPSS 22.0 and GraphPad Prism 8.0.2 were applied for data analysis. RESULTS: Among the 359 tinnitus patients, 126 cases were diagnosed with acute tinnitus, 58 cases were subacute tinnitus, and 175 cases were chronic tinnitus. Patients with acute and chronic tinnitus differed in terms of side of tinnitus, hearing loss, frequency of tinnitus, severity of tinnitus, anxiety, depression, and sleep status. Different characteristics were included in the multivariate ordinal logistic regression analysis. Persistent tinnitus (OR = 2.00, p = .008), high frequency hearing loss (OR = 4.77, p < .001), depression (OR = 1.23, p < .001) were found to be positively associated with the course of tinnitus. Unilateral tinnitus (OR = 0.48, p = .003), mild (OR = 0.29, p = .001) and moderate (OR = 0.46, p = .038) hearing loss, VAS scores (OR = 0.82, p = .032), anxiety (OR = 0.81, p < .001), THI scores (OR = 0.98, p = .002), and sleep disorders (OR = 0.94, p = .025) were found to be negatively associated with the course of tinnitus. CONCLUSION: Patients with acute tinnitus were at greater risk for anxiety, sleep disturbances, and exacerbation of tinnitus perception, and those with chronic tinnitus were at greater risk for depression. LAY SUMMARY: Our study demonstrated that patients with acute tinnitus were at greater risk for anxiety, sleep disturbances, and exacerbation of tinnitus perception, and those with chronic tinnitus were at greater risk for depression.