Tinnitus Assessment and Management: A Survey of Practicing Audiologists in the United States and Canada.

Background: Tinnitus is a prevalent auditory disorder that can become severely debilitating. Despite decades of investigation, there remains no conclusive cure for tinnitus. Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are available for assessing and managing tinnitus.

Evaluating the benefit of hearing aids with motion-based beamformer adaptation in a real-world setup.

Objective: Conventional directional hearing aid microphone technology may obstruct listening intentions when the talker and listener walk side by side. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate hearing aids that use a motion sensor to address listening needs during walking.

Design: Each participant completed two walks in randomised order, one walk with each of two hearing aid programs: (1) conventional beamformer adaptation that activated an adaptive, multiband beamformer in loud environments and (2) motion-based beamformer adaptation that activated a pinna-mimicking microphone setting when walking was detected.

Infant Cortical Auditory Evoked Potentials to Lateralized Noise Shifts Produced by Changes in Interaural Time Difference.

Objectives: Newborns reliably orient to sound location soon after birth; by age 1 month this orienting disappears until after age 4 months. It has been suggested that orienting by the newborn reflects subcortical-mediated reflexes, which are suppressed by age 1 month; reappearance of orienting then occurs after age 4 months with maturation of cortical mechanisms of sound localization. In the present study, we assess auditory lateralization in young infants (and adults) by recording slow cortical auditory evoked potentials to lateralization shifts in dichotic noise produced by changes in interaural time difference (ITD).

Multiple-ASSR Interactions in Adults with Sensorineural Hearing Loss.

The multiple auditory steady-state response (multiple-ASSR) technique, where thresholds for up to 8 frequencies (4 in each ear) are obtained simultaneously, is currently of great interest for audiometric assessment of infants. Although threshold estimates using the multiple-ASSR appear to be reasonably accurate, it is not currently known whether it is more efficient to use multiple stimuli or single stimuli when testing individuals with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). The current study investigated the effect of single versus multiple simultaneous stimuli on the 80- and 40-Hz ASSRs in adults with normal hearing or SNHL.

Multiple auditory steady state response thresholds to bone conduction stimuli in adults with normal and elevated thresholds.

Objective: Auditory steady state responses (ASSRs) to multiple air conduction (AC) stimuli modulated at ∼80 Hz have been shown to provide reasonable estimates of the behavioral audiogram. To distinguish the type of hearing loss (i.e.

Does the 40-Hz auditory steady-state response show the binaural masking level difference?

In contrast to the transient (N1-P2) and steady-state (<20 Hz) cortical responses, neither the transient (auditory brain stem response) nor the steady-state (80 Hz) brain stem responses show the binaural masking level difference (BMLD). This study determined behavioral and 40-Hz auditory steady-state response (ASSR) BMLDs for both signal and noise interaural inversions. Results showed clear behavioral BMLD but no 40-Hz ASSR BMLD.

Effect of an enlarged endolymphatic duct on bone conduction threshold.

An enlarged endolymphatic duct and sac (EDS) that makes contact with the cerebrospinal fluid–dural interface plays an important role in the pathway of bone conduction and enhances bone conduction at lower frequencies. Objectives. We investigated whether the bone conduction threshold was improved when the EDS was enlarged.

Otoacoustic emissions, ear fullness and tinnitus in the recovery course of sudden deafness.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate how the symptoms of ear fullness, tinnitus and otoacoustic emissions (OAE) change in relation to the recovery course of pure tone audiometry thresholds (PTA) in sudden deafness (SD).

Methods: This study analyzed follow-up data on ear fullness, tinnitus and otoacoustic emissions of eight SD patients with good hearing improvement (Group A) and eight SD patients with poor hearing improvement (Group B) in an attempt to elucidate the behavior of these symptoms in their recovery course. This study was done until there was no change in the PTA for more than 1 week and hearing recovery was no longer expected.

Cochlear modiolus and lateral semicircular canal in sudden deafness.

Conclusion: This study demonstrated that precise analysis shows that the inner ear shape in sudden deafness (SD) is different from that in controls in that the fluid-filled area of SD labyrinths is significantly larger than that of controls. Reduced cochlear modiolus area and inner area of the lateral semicircular canal (LSCC) may be associated with insufficient maturation of the inner ear.

Objective: The aim of this study was to quantify the morphologies of the cochlea and LSCC using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and to evaluate their relationships with clinical symptoms in SD.

Visualization of endolymphatic hydrops in patients with Meniere's disease.

Objective: Recently, there have been many reports of intratympanic gentamicin therapy for the treatment of intractable Meniere's disease. Intratympanic administration of steroids has also been used to treat sudden sensorineural hearing loss. We attempted to visualize how the intratympanically administered drug enters the inner ear.

Lateral semicircular canal and vertigo in patients with large vestibular aqueduct syndrome.

Objective: To evaluate the hypothesis that there are differences in the morphology of the lateral semicircular canal (LSCC) between patients with large vestibular aqueduct syndrome (LVAS) and control subjects and to investigate the clinical implications of these differences.

Study Design: Retrospective case review.

Setting: Tertiary referral center.