CONTROL 601and his ability to perform in biofeedback. The more psychopathic the person is the more likely the tin nitus will fail to improve with biofeedback. The "healthy neurotics" do well with biofeedback. They are able to reduce their tinnitus and become more aware of some of the dynamics involved with it.A small group of our patients have benefitted from the use of the tinnitus masker and are grateful for the relief the masker provides. Certainly it is not a panacea, but it does offer some relief and should be offered as a possible treatment to these patients.The best results of treatment of tinnitus occur af ter complete evaluation, examination, and thorough explanation to the patient. 2. Fowler EP. Head noises in normal and disordered ears. Arch Otolaryngol 1944; 39:498-503. 3. House JW, Miller L, House PR. Severe tinnitus: treatment with biofeedback training (results in 41 cases). Trans Am Acad Ophthalmol Otolaryngol 1976; 84:697-703. 4. House PR. Personality of the tinnitus patient. GIBS Sym posium 1981; 85 (in press). 5. Dandy WE. Surgical treatment of Meniere's disease. Surg Gynecol Obstet 1941; 72:421-5. 6. Ward PH, Babin R, Calcaterra TC, Konrad HR. Opera tive treatment of surgical lesions with objective tinnitus. Ann Otol Rhinol Laryngol 1975; 84:473-81. 7. Classgold A, Altmann F. The effects of stapes surgery on tinnitus. Laryngoscope 1966; 76:1524-31. 8. House WF, Luetje CM, eds. A history of acoustic tumor surgery: 1800-1900, early history. Vol. 1. Baltimore: University Park Press, 1979. 9. House JW. Treatment of severe tinnitus with biofeedback training. Laryngoscope 1978; 78:406-12. 10. House JW, Johnson EW. Tinnitus: tinnitus masker and bi ofeedback training. Trans Pac Coast Otoophthalmol Soc Annu Meet 1979; 60:115-20. 11. Vernon J. Attempts to relieve tinnitus. J Am Audiol Soc 1977; 2:124-31. 12. Vernon J, Schleoning A. Tinnitus: a new management. Laryngoscope 1978; 88:413-9. 13. Saltzman M, Ersner MJ. A hearing aid for the relief of tin nitus aurium. Laryngoscope 1947; 51:358-66.Medical treatment is presented as the best hope of the various treatment methods available for the management of tinnitus. A test dose of 100 mg lidocaine given rapidly intravenously will give good or partial temporary relief to approximately 80% of patients with tinnitus. More permanent relief can then be achieved by the oral anticonvulsants carbamazepine or primidone but the side effects of these drugs are occasionally too severe to justify their use. Three preliminary clinical studies of the oral amide of lidocaine, tocainide hydrochloride, were conducted and results with 600 mg four times daily are very promising. Further long-term clinical trials with tocainide will be started soon. It would appear that local anesthetics when given intravenously block the multisynaptic slow pathways in tinnitus as well as in chronic pain, with which there are many other similarities. The delay in wave V in the BSER and the sudden sleep induced in patients with a good response to intravenous lidocaine further confirm the site of ...

Surgical implantation of a multichannel cochlear prosthesis has become a widespread treatment for profound hearing loss. The relationship between duration of hearing loss and speech recognition ability was examined in 20 postlinguistically deafened adults using the Nucleus 22-Channel Cochlear Prosthesis. Data analysis indicated statistically significant negative correlations between duration of profound hearing loss and postoperative performance on the Central Institute for the Deaf Everyday Sentence Test and the Northwestern University Monosyllabic Word Test (NU-6). Age at implantation and age at onset of profound hearing loss were not found to be significantly correlated with performance on the two measures. These findings are discussed in terms of patient counseling and prediction of potential benefit to the patient.

Time-compressed versions of the WIPI and PB-K 50 speech discrimination measures were presented at two sensation levels to 60 children divided into three age-groups of 20 each. Results showed that average intelligibility scores increased as a function of increasing age and sensation level and decreased with increasing amounts of time compression. The PB-K 50 measure was found to be more difficult than the WIPI for each age-group under each condition of time compression and sensation level. The several factors under study were found to interact. The results are discussed relative to open- versus closed-message set response tasks and the implications for audiological diagnoses of children with central auditory processing problems.

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