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. 2023 Apr 12;13(4):652.
doi: 10.3390/brainsci13040652.

A Heterogeneous Sample of a Spanish Tinnitus Cohort

María Cuesta  1 , Pedro Cobo  1
Affiliations

A Heterogeneous Sample of a Spanish Tinnitus Cohort

María Cuesta et al. Brain Sci. .

Abstract

Taking into account heterogeneity has been highly recommended in tinnitus studies both to disentangle all diverse factors that can contribute to their complexity and to design personalized treatments. To this aim, a heterogeneous sample of 270 tinnitus subjects is analyzed considering the gender (male/female), hearing condition (hearing-impaired/normal-hearing), and tinnitus severity (compensated/decompensated) subgroups. Two categorical variables (tinnitus laterality and tinnitus sound type) and four quantitative variables (average auditory threshold, age of tinnitus onset, tinnitus frequency, and tinnitus severity) are used. The percentages (for categorical variables) and mean values (for quantitative variables) of the whole sample are compared with these of each subgroup. Furthermore, correlational and hypothesis testing is applied to calculate the correlation coefficients and statistical significance, respectively. The results show that the male and female subgroups contrast in the sound type and frequency of their tinnitus, hearing-impaired and normal-hearing individuals differ, in addition, in their average auditory threshold, and the compensated/decompensated tinnitus subgroup provides significantly distinct values in tinnitus laterality and tinnitus sound.

Keywords: age; gender; hearing loss; heterogeneity; tinnitus; tinnitus severity.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Mean hearing levels of the 270 participants in left and right ears. Shaded area around the HL curves outlines confidence intervals.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Mean hearing levels of the (a) 178 male and (b) 92 female participants in left and right ears. Shaded area around the HL curves outlines confidence intervals.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Mean hearing levels of the (a) 201 HI and (b) 69 NH participants in left and right ears. Shaded area around the HL curves outlines confidence intervals.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Scatter plot of tinnitus frequency versus AAT for the decompensated subgroup.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Scatter plot of tinnitus severity versus AAT for the decompensated subgroup.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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