[Tinnitus during headache: clinical-instrumental evaluation]

During the five years running from December 1993 to January 1998, 112 patients who had come to our University Clinic suffering from headache were examined. From this group 71 complaining of tinnitus during headache were recruited for the study: 19 patients suffered from migraine without aura, 8 migraine with aura, 15 tension headache, 21 mixed headache, 3 basic migraine and 5 cluster headache. The purpose of this work was to determine the incidence and to identify the frequency of the various types of tinnitus in the study sample. Once cardiovascular and metabolic pathologies, previous cranial or cervical traumas, barotrauma, chronic on-the-job noise exposure, cervical arthritis, ATM malocclusion, use of drugs that damage the hearing apparatus, morbose processes of the external and middle ear, otosclerosis, jugular tympanum paraganglioma, Meniere's disease, acoustic neurinoma were all ruled out, the patients underwent the following battery of instrumental tests: tonal audiometry, impedance measurement, vestibular examination, electronystagmography, ABR, simplified tinnitometry. Only those patients with normal hearing underwent the tinnitometry and, therefore, the type of tinnitus was established only for this group of 53 patients. Tinnitometry showed that 37% of these subjects had tinnitus at the higher frequency tones, 11% at the middle frequencies, 29% complained of tinnitus at the lower frequencies while 23% complained that the bothersome buzzing was a compound noise. In addition, the subjective intensity of the tinnitus was analyzed. The authors devised a tinnitus irritation scale covering a range from 0 (not irritating) to 10 (intolerable). The tinnitus was bilateral in 66% of the cases while it was limited to only one ear in the remaining 34%. In 15% of the cases tinnitus was present even when there was no headache. In the literature, the etiopathogenesis of tinnitus associated with migraine headache has been attributed to vascular and neuropeptide mechanisms. Even the psychological component appears to play a role in triggering the event. These hypotheses deserve more in depth study.