Identifying psychological and clinical risk factors for moderate-to-severe tinnitus in older patients with hearing loss: a multivariable prediction model.

OBJECTIVE

To develop and validate a clinical prediction model for moderate-to-severe tinnitus (THI ≥ 38) in patients with hearing loss and to identify the key psychological and clinical factors associated with its risk.

METHODS

This retrospective single-centre study included 301 patients with hearing loss who visited Qinghai University Affiliated Hospital between August 2024 and May 2025. The cohort was randomly divided into a training set (n = 210) and a validation set (n = 91) in a 7:3 ratio. Moderate-to-severe tinnitus served as the outcome of interest. Psychological and clinical risk factors were initially screened using univariate logistic regression, and variables with p < 0.05 were subsequently included in a multivariable logistic regression model.

RESULTS

The final multivariable model identified five independent psychological and clinical risk factors for moderate-to-severe tinnitus: older age (OR = 2.415), hypertension (OR = 2.120), poor sleep quality (OR = 2.821), anxiety (OR = 1.967), and severe hearing loss (OR = 3.452). The model demonstrated good discriminative performance, with an AUC of 0.734 in the training set and 0.760 in the validation set.

CONCLUSION

In patients with hearing loss, psychological and clinical risk factors-including poor sleep quality, anxiety, hypertension, and severe hearing loss-were significantly associated with moderate-to-severe tinnitus. These findings underscore the need for integrated management strategies that address both psychological and clinical components of tinnitus risk.