Prevalence of insomnia and impact on quality of life among community elderly subjects with tinnitus.

Objectives: We sought to determine the prevalence of insomnia and its impact on the quality of life (QoL) among community elderly subjects (at least 65 years of age) with subjective tinnitus.

Methods: After household selection with multistage stratified area probability sampling, face-to-face interviews were used to obtain self-reports of subjective tinnitus and insomnia, and QoL was assessed with the WHOQoL-Bref instrument.

Results: Among 1302 elderly subjects, there were 183 subjects (109 female and 74 male) with tinnitus. Among those with tinnitus, insomnia was encountered in 95 (51.9%) and was found to be significantly more common among those with tinnitus than among those without (378 of 1119, or 33.8%; p = 0.002). The insomnia symptoms included difficulty in maintaining sleep in 73.4% of subjects, difficulty in falling asleep in 70.0%, early morning wakefulness in 64.3%, nonrestorative sleep in 35.1%, and daytime sleepiness in 34.7%. Univariate analysis revealed difficulty with falling asleep (p = 0.01) and early morning wakefulness (p = 0.05) to be significantly associated with tinnitus among the symptoms. Student's t-test and logistic regression analysis revealed significant deterioration in the total QoL and in the physical, psychological, social, and environmental QoL domains among elderly subjects who had tinnitus with insomnia as compared with those without insomnia.

Conclusions: We believe that insomnia is significantly more common among elderly subjects with tinnitus than among those without, and that its presence further depreciates the QoL in these elderly individuals.