الفهرس 
introduction & rationaleOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Tinnitus is defined as the perception of sound in the absence of an external source.
Tinnitus can be either objective or subjective. Objective tinnitus refers to the perception of sound that can also be heard by the examiner and is usually due to blood flow or muscle movement.
Most commonly, however, tinnitus is subjective; the sound is only heard by the person experiencing it and no source of the sound is identified. For many people tinnitus is persistent and troublesome, and has disabling effects such as insomnia, difficulty concentrating, difficulties in communication and social interaction, and negative emotional responses such as anxiety and depression.
One important variable to explain individual differences is the intensity of the tinnitus signal. Some patients describe their tinnitus as very noisy or louder than most or even all environmental sounds.
For someone who has tinnitus and an aidable hearing loss. This combination of hearing aid provision with education and advice might be considered a complex intervention with interdependent components.
Hearing aids may be beneficial for people with tinnitus in a number of ways. The amplification of external sounds may reverse or reduce the drive responsible for ’pathological’ changes in the central auditory system associated with hearing loss, such as increased gain or auditory cortex re-organization, possibly by strengthening lateral inhibitory connections. Increased neuronal activity that results from amplified sounds may reduce the contrast between tinnitus activity and background activity thus reducing audibility and the awareness of tinnitus.
Alternatively, amplification may simply refocus attention on alternative auditory stimuli that are incompatible and unrelated to the tinnitus sound. The primary purpose of fitting a hearing aid is to reduce hearing difficulties and improve communication which for some people should reduce the stress and anxiety that may be associated with their hearing difficulties.
The goal of the study was to determine the effects of hearing aid fitting on the perceptual characteristics of tinnitus.
The study group comprised of 60 patients with different degrees of hearing loss in the age group (22to 61) years.
There was moderate positive correlation between hearing threshold and each of THI baseline, 3 months, 6 months and 12 months (p<0.05).
We found that by the baseline, no slight or mild cases were detected while moderate THI represented 15% , severe 28% and catastrophic 56%. These rates changed 3 months later as catastrophic cases decreased almost to a third of its rate at the baseline. By the 6th month, no catastrophic cases were detected and severe stages recorded trivial rates while most of cases were categorized as mild or moderate. By the end of the study, the great majority of cases were slight (81.6%) and the remaining portion was mild, with no moderate, severe or catastrophic cases recorded.