Objective: 

Majority of the patients may describe their perception of tinnitus according to their cultural background and pose a challenge for the clinician. Patients with tinnitus usually have sensory-neural hearing loss and audiologic properties of hearing loss may effect the perception of tinnitus. The aim of this study was to identify the correlation between the patients' description of tinnitus and objective measurements.

Methods: 

One hundred and five cases with tinnitus (50.5% male and 49.5% female) were included in the study. They were identified as having pure sensory-neural hearing loss. They filled out a questionairre including their socio-demographic features and their complaints and perceptions of tinnitus. Pure tone audiometry, high frequency audiometry, tympanometric evaluation and pitch-loudness matching were performed for each patient.

Results: 

According to the description of tinnitus, a statistically significant difference was noted between the frequencies of hearing loss (p <0.01). Patients with a frequency of hearing loss higher than 8000 Hz described their tinnitus as crickets, insects, and sounds of steam, whereas in frequencies of hearing loss between 4000–8000 Hz tinnitus was described as resonance, bell tone and transformer noise. Under 4000 Hz frequency of hearing loss, patients identified their tinnitus as the sound of wind.

Conclusions: 

We have demonstrated a correlation between tinnitus descriptions of patients and audiologic measurements, which may lead the clinicians to better comprehend their patients' complaints. Understanding and describing the definition of tinnitus are closely related to patients' native language and culture. Further studies are needed to validate our results in larger population-based studies in different cultures.