New Advances in Tinnitus Assessment webinar with Philippe Fournier, Ph.D – November 20th, 2018 at 1 pm ET.
While masking and residual inhibition (RI) may provide diagnostic and prognostic valuable information, these measures are rarely performed in clinics, as they are not adapted to clinical constraints. This webinar will present a new method for measuring tinnitus masking and residual inhibition by using an acoustic sequence made of pulsed acoustic stimulation of fixed duration and inter-stimulus intervals that may be more suited to clinical constraints. The difference between this new technique and the ‘’classic’’ method will be provided. The results obtained with this new technique from a tinnitus cohort of 64 tinnitus patients will be presented. From the study, it was concluded that, with the new technique, the measurements of tinnitus masking and residual inhibition can be easily, quickly and reliably obtained from a wide variety of patients displaying different hearing loss configurations such as presbyacusis, flat hearing loss and even normal hearing. More so, this approach allows the categorization of tinnitus patients into different sub-groups. The potential of these measures as a prognostic indicator of sound therapy success will be discussed.
Learning Outcomes:
- Understand the concept of tinnitus masking and residual inhibition
- Differentiate the new technique using pulse noise from the classic method to measure tinnitus masking and residual inhibition
- Integrate the new minimum masking level and minimum residual inhibition level technique using pulse-noise in their clinical practice
- Integrate those new results with those of other test in their overall interpretation of the tinnitus condition of a patient
The Speaker: Philippe Fournier, Ph.D., Postdoctoral fellow researcher, M.Sc.S., Audiologist, FAAA
Philippe Fournier is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Université d’Aix-Marseille, France. He is also the founder, and past CEO and president of the Quebec Association of Speech-language Pathologists and Audiologists (QASLPA) from 2011-2014. Philippe research has been dedicated to improve diagnostic measures and therapy options for tinnitus and hyperacusis. Philippe also has previous experience as a clinician in a private practice setting in Montreal and as audiology clinical instructor for the audiology clinic of the Université de Montréal.
