BackgroundAcute tinnitus and its transition to chronic tinnitus are poorly investigated, and factors associated with amelioration versus exacerbation are largely unknown. Aims of this study were to identify early predictors for the future development of tinnitus severity.MethodPatients with tinnitus of no longer than 4 weeks presenting at an otolaryngologist filled out questionnaires at inclusion (T1), as well as 3 (T3), and 6 months (T4) after tinnitus onset. 6 weeks after onset, an interview was conducted over the phone (T2). An audiogram was taken at T1, perceived tinnitus loudness, and tinnitus-related distress were assessed separately and repeatedly together with oversensitivity to external sounds and the levels of depression and anxiety. Furthermore, coping strategies with illness were recorded.ResultsComplete remission until T4 was observed in 11% of the 47 participants, while voiced complaints at onset were stable in the majority. In the subgroup with a relevant level of depression at T1, tinnitus-related distress worsened in 30% until T4. For unilateral tinnitus, perceived loudness in the chronic condition correlated strongly with hearing loss at 2 kHz on the tinnitus ear, while a similar correlation was not found for tinnitus located to both ears or within the head.ConclusionResults suggest early manifestation of tinnitus complaints, and stress the importance of screening all patients presenting with acute tinnitus for levels of depression and tinnitus-related distress. Furthermore, hearing levels should be monitored, and use of hearing aids should be considered to reduce tinnitus loudness after having ascertained that sound sensitivity is within normal range.

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Objectives: Hearing improves significantly with bimodal provision, i.e., a cochlear implant (CI) at one ear and a hearing aid (HA) at the other, but performance shows a high degree of variability resulting in substantial uncertainty about the performance that can be expected by the individual CI user. The objective of this study was to explore how auditory event-related potentials (AERPs) of bimodal listeners in response to spoken words approximate the electrophysiological response of normal hearing (NH) listeners. Study Design: Explorative prospective analysis during the first 6 months of bimodal listening using a within-subject repeated measures design. Setting: Academic tertiary care center. Participants: Twenty-seven adult participants with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss who received a HiRes 90K CI and continued use of a HA at the non-implanted ear. Age-matched NH listeners served as controls. Intervention: Cochlear implantation. Main Outcome Measures: Obligatory auditory evoked potentials N1 and P2, and the event-related N2 potential in response to monosyllabic words and their reversed sound traces before, as well as 3 and 6 months post-implantation. The task required word/nonword classification. Stimuli were presented within speech-modulated noise. Loudness of word/non-word signals was adjusted individually to achieve the same intelligibility across groups and assessments. Results: Intelligibility improved significantly with bimodal hearing, and the N1-P2 response approximated the morphology seen in NH with enhanced and earlier responses to the words compared to their reversals. For bimodal listeners, a prominent negative deflection was present between 370 and 570 ms post stimulus onset (N2), irrespective of stimulus type. This was absent for NH controls; hence, this response did not approximate the NH response during the study interval. N2 source localization evidenced extended activation of general cognitive areas in frontal and prefrontal brain areas in the CI group. Balkenhol et al. Adaptation to Electro-Acoustic Hearing Conclusions: Prolonged and spatially extended processing in bimodal CI users suggests employment of additional auditory-cognitive mechanisms during speech processing. This does not reduce within 6 months of bimodal experience and may be a correlate of the enhanced listening effort described by CI listeners.

<b><i>Introduction:</i></b> Augmented reality can improve planning and execution of surgical procedures. Head-mounted devices such as the HoloLens® (Microsoft, Redmond, WA, USA) are particularly suitable to achieve these aims because they are controlled by hand gestures and enable contactless handling in a sterile environment. <b><i>Objectives:</i></b> So far, these systems have not yet found their way into the operating room for surgery of the parotid gland. This study explored the feasibility and accuracy of augmented reality-assisted parotid surgery. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> 2D MRI holographic images were created, and 3D holograms were reconstructed from MRI DICOM files and made visible via the HoloLens. 2D MRI slices were scrolled through, 3D images were rotated, and 3D structures were shown and hidden only using hand gestures. The 3D model and the patient were aligned manually. <b><i>Results:</i></b> The use of augmented reality with the HoloLens in parotic surgery was feasible. Gestures were recognized correctly. Mean accuracy of superimposition of the holographic model and patient’s anatomy was 1.3 cm. Highly significant differences were seen in position error of registration between central and peripheral structures (<i>p</i> = 0.0059), with a least deviation of 10.9 mm (centrally) and highest deviation for the peripheral parts (19.6-mm deviation). <b><i>Conclusion:</i></b> This pilot study offers a first proof of concept of the clinical feasibility of the HoloLens for parotid tumor surgery. Workflow is not affected, but additional information is provided. The surgical performance could become safer through the navigation-like application of reality-fused 3D holograms, and it improves ergonomics without compromising sterility. Superimposition of the 3D holograms with the surgical field was possible, but further invention is necessary to improve the accuracy.

Cochlear implants (CI) improve hearing for the severely hearing impaired. With an extension of implantation candidacy, today many CI listeners use a hearing aid on their contralateral ear, referred to as bimodal listening. It is uncertain, however, whether the brains of bimodal listeners can combine the electrical and acoustical sound information and how much CI experience is needed to achieve an improved performance with bimodal listening. Patients with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss undergoing implant surgery were tested in their ability to understand speech in quiet and in noise, before and again 3 and 6 months after provision of a CI. Results of these bimodal listeners were compared to age-matched, normal hearing controls (NH). The benefit of adding a contralateral hearing aid was calculated in terms of head shadow, binaural summation, binaural squelch, and spatial release from masking from the results of a sentence recognition test. Beyond that, bimodal benefit was estimated from the difference in amplitudes and latencies of the N1, P2, and N2 potentials of the brains’ auditory evoked response (AEP) toward speech. Data of fifteen participants contributed to the results. CI provision resulted in significant improvement of speech recognition with the CI ear, and in taking advantage of the head shadow effect for understanding speech in noise. Some amount of binaural processing was suggested by a positive binaural summation effect 6 month post-implantation that correlated significantly with symmetry of pure tone thresholds. Moreover, a significant negative correlation existed between binaural summation and latency of the P2 potential. With CI experience, morphology of the N1 and P2 potentials in the AEP response approximated that of NH, whereas, N2 remained different. Significant AEP differences between monaural and binaural processing were shown for NH and for bimodal listeners 6 month post-implantation. Although the grand-averaged difference in N1 amplitude between monaural and binaural listening was similar for NH and the bimodal group, source localization showed group-dependent differences in auditory and speech-relevant cortex, suggesting different processing in the bimodal listeners.

Objectives: Patient-reported outcomes gain importance for the assessment of auditory abilities in cochlear implant users and for the evaluation of auditory rehabilitation. Aims of the study were to explore the interrelation of self-reported improvements in auditory ability with improvements in speech comprehension and to identify factors other than audiological improvement that affect self-reported auditory ability.Study Design: Explorative prospective analysis using a within-subjects repeated measures design.Setting: Academic tertiary care center.Participants: Twenty-seven adult participants with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss who received a HiRes 90K CI and continued use of a HA at the non-implanted ear (bimodal hearing).Intervention: Cochlear implantation.Main Outcome Measures: Self-reported auditory ability/disability assessed by the comparative version of the Speech, Spatial and Qualities of Hearing Scale (SSQ-B), and monosyllable as well as sentence comprehension in quiet and within speech modulated noise from different directions assessed pre- as well as 3 and 6 months post-implantation.Results: Data of 17 individuals were analyzed. At the endpoint of the study, improvement of self-reported auditory ability was significant. Regarding audiometric measures, significant improvement was seen for CI-aided pure tone thresholds, for monaural CI-assisted and bimodal sentence comprehension in quiet and in speech-modulated noise that was presented from the same source or at the side of the HA-ear. Correlations between self-reported and audiometric improvements remained weak, with the exception of the improvement seen for monaural CI-aided sentence comprehension in quiet and self-perceived improvement of sound quality. Considerable correlations existed between self-reported improvements and current level of depression and anxiety, and with general self-efficaciousness. Regression analyses substantiated a positive influence of self-efficaciousness on self-reported improvement in speech comprehension and between the improvement of monaural CI-aided sentence comprehension in quiet and perceived sound quality as well as a negative influence of anxiety on self-reported improvement in spatial hearing. Self-reported improvements were significantly better in the subgroup with intensive as compared to regular rehabilitation.Conclusions: Self-reported auditory ability/disability represents an important measure for the success of bimodal CI-provision. It is influenced by personal and mental health factors that may improve CI-rehabilitation results if addressed during rehabilitation.

Perceptive and receptive aspects of subjective tinnitus like loudness and tinnitus-related distress are partly independent. The high percentage of hearing loss in individuals with tinnitus suggests causality of hearing impairment particularly for the tinnitus percept, leading to the hypothesis that restoration of auditory input has a larger effect on tinnitus loudness than on tinnitus-related distress. Furthermore, it is assumed that high levels of depression or anxiety prevent reductions of tinnitus loudness and distress following restoration of activity in the cochlea. This prospective study investigated the influence of unilateral cochlear implant (CI) on tinnitus in 19 postlingually deafened adults during 6 months following implantation. All had bimodal provision with the other ear being continuously supported by a hearing aid. On the day before CI implantation (T1, T2), and at about 3 and 6 months postsurgery (T3, T4), participants were questioned about their current tinnitus. Loudness was rated on a Numeric Rating Scale, distress was assessed by the TQ12 Tinnitus Questionnaire, and depression and anxiety were recorded with the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. At T2, 79% experienced tinnitus, one participant developed tinnitus after implantation. Following implantation, tinnitus loudness was reduced significantly by 42%, while reductions in tinnitus-related distress (−24%), depression (−20%), and anxiety (−20%) did not attain statistical significance. Significant correlations existed between tinnitus measures, and between postimplantation tinnitus-related distress and anxiety and depression scores. Moreover, improvement of hearing in the CI ear was significantly correlated with reduction in tinnitus loudness. A new aspect of this study is the particular influence of CI provision on perceptive aspects of preexisting tinnitus (hypothesis 1), with the effect size regarding postimplant reduction of perceived tinnitus loudness (1.40) being much larger than effect sizes on the reduction of tinnitus-related distress (0.38), depression (0.53), and anxiety (0.53). Contrary to expectation both tinnitus measures reduce even in the majority of CI recipients with increased levels of anxiety or depression. This suggests that reduction of the tinnitus signal by restoring activity in the cochlea cannot be entirely compensated for by central tinnitus mechanisms and results in a reduction of perceptive and less so of reactive aspects of subjective tinnitus.

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