Pulsatile tinnitus is generally classified a kind of objective tinnitus, meaning that it is not only audible to the patient but also to the examiner on auscultation of the auditory canal and/or of surrounding structures with use of an auscultation tube or stethoscope. Usually, pulsatile tinnitus is heard as a lower pitched thumping or booming, a rougher blowing sound which is coincidental with respiration, or as a clicking, higher pitched rhythmic sensation. Pulsatile tinnitus may be associated with vascular abnormalities such as arterioevenous shunts or glomus tumors or the jugular vein, arterial bruits related to a high-riding carotid artery (close to the auditory areas) or carotid stenosis, or venous abnormalities such as a dehiscent jugular bulb or to hypertension. Finally, in some patients, mechanical abnormalities such a spatulous eustachian tubes, palatomyoclonus (small spasms of muscles in the soft palate area), or idiopathic stapedial muscle spasm may represent the underlying cause of pulsatile tinnitus. (Human Phenotype Ontology, HP_0008629)
20 genes associated with the disease Pulsatile Tinnitus in GWAS and other genetic association datasets from the DisGeNET Gene-Disease Associations dataset.
