ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurol.
Sec. Neuro-Otology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1672762
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Multidisciplinary Management of Tinnitus and VertigoView all articles
Speech recognition thresholds correlate with tinnitus intensity in individuals with primary subjective tinnitus
Provisionally accepted
- 1Pecsi Tudomanyegyetem, Pécs, Hungary
- 2Maihoub ENT Clinic, Limassol, Cyprus
- 3Opera Clinic, Budapest, Hungary
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objectives: This study aimed to analyse the relationship between tinnitus and speech audiometry results. Material and methods: In this investigation, 314 patients with primary subjective tinnitus and 279 patients with sensorineural hearing loss, serving as a control group, were enrolled. All participants underwent comprehensive assessments, which included pure-tone and speech audiometry. Results: In considering basic parameters, a slight predominance of females was noted in both groups, with leftsided and bilateral tinnitus being the most common types. There were no significant differences in pure-tone averages between the tinnitus and control groups. In the tinnitus group, speech recognition thresholds were significantly higher (p<0.00001) compared to the control group. In analysing the relationships between tinnitus intensities and speech recognition thresholds, a significant (p=0.000) positive correlation (rho=0.581) was revealed. Additionally, a significant (p=0.027) positive correlation (rho=0.227) was found between tinnitus intensities and Tinnitus Handicap Inventory scores.The relationship between tinnitus intensities and speech recognition thresholds demonstrates how tinnitus affects speech comprehension. Additionally, the intensity of tinnitus significantly influences an individual's perception of tinnitus severity.
Keywords: Tinnitus, Tinnitus intensity, Pure-tone audiometry, tinnitus matching, Tinnitus severity, Speech audiometry
Received: 24 Jul 2025; Accepted: 19 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Panayiota, Maihoub and Molnár. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: András Molnár, Opera Clinic, Budapest, Hungary
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.