[Study on gender difference of tinnitus in medical staff].
OBJECTIVE
To investigate whether there is gender difference in the incidence and severity of tinnitus in medical staff (including doctors, nurses, and technicians).


METHODS
A total of 354 people (all are medial stuff from hospitals in Guangzhou) were invited to be involved in the investigation and granted a self-reported questionnaire of tinnitus (designed by the authors; based on the scoring method of severity of tinnitus (Liu et al.). Statistical analysis on the data was performed using SPSS Statistics 17.0.


RESULTS
(1) The incidence of tinnitus of the sample was 43.22%, with that in female higher than in male (P < 0.05), and that in nurses higher than in doctors or technicians (P < 0.01). (2) The effect of working position factor on the incidence of prolonged tinnitus was significant (P < 0.01). However, no statistically significant gender difference was detected in the incidence of prolonged tinnitus. (3) There was no statistically significant difference of tinnitus severity scores between different genders or among different positions (P > 0.05). (4) There was statistically significant difference among the four sub-items of the questionnaire (P < 0.01), with the mean score of "occurred environment" higher than "the impact on sleeping", "the impact on everyday life", and "the impact on emotion".


CONCLUSIONS
(1) The effort-reward imbalance might be the key factor of the gender difference in the incidence of tinnitus. (2) For patients of tinnitus, improving the knowledge about their symptoms as well as levels of psychological resilience would be helpful to relieve the mental impairment of tinnitus.
Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510630, China.
Zhicheng
Z
Li
Min
M
Qi
Xiangli
X
Zeng
D000328:Adult; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008297:Male; D008503:Medical Staff; D008875:Middle Aged; D012737:Sex Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014012:Tinnitus / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology