Otosclerosis and chronic tinnitus

Chronic subjective tinnitus is a common feature of clinical otosclerosis. Analysis of the records of 1,014 consecutive cases of clinical otosclerosis, all confirmed by stapes surgery in South Australia between 1960 and 1972, gives a preoperative prevalence of this symptom of 65%. The association of tinnitus with various predictors is considered, and a statistical analysis is presented. Tinnitus has an association with gender (p < .0001), mean preoperative bone conduction (BC) level (p = .0012), mean air conduction (AC) level (p = .0192), and mean air-bone gap (p = .0075). The associations between tinnitus and the age of the patient, the duration of deafness, the presence of Schwartze's sign, and the severity of footplate pathological involvement were all nonsignificant. The association of tinnitus with the AC and BC thresholds is unexpectedly paradoxical. An economic predictive model for tinnitus in otosclerosis has been constructed from the 2 strongly significant variables, gender and mean BC hearing level, by logistic regression. In this large series of cases, the log odds in favor of finding tinnitus are about 0.810 for male subjects and 1.394 for female subjects when the BC level is zero. The log odds fall by 0.014 for each decibel of mean BC rise. Ronald E. Gristwood, William N. Venable