14th Congress of the European Federation of Audiology Societies, 22-25 May 2019, Lisbon, Portugal 14th Congress of the European Federation of Audiology Societies WORKSHOPS W01 W05 EFAS WG SHS School Age Hearing Tinnitus: why is it important to have Screening standardization? Speakers: J. Wouters (Belgium), Lea Zupan, Speakers: D. Hoare (UK), H. Haider Jan de Laat, W. Dreschler (The Netherlands), S. Denys (Belgium) Multidisciplinary European Guideline For Tinnitus Tinnitus involves the percept of a sound or sounds in the W02 ear or head without an external source. Most individuals experiencing tinnitus have a neutral reaction to the per- EFAS WG Auditory Processing Disorders cept. However, for some it becomes a problem. Bother- some (distressing) tinnitus might be better described as Speaker: V. Iliadou (Greece) a negative emotional and auditory experience, associated with, or described in terms of actual or potential physical Summary: The APD Gold standard for diagnosis will be or psychological harm. presented based on an evidence based approach. Details on test battery development and use as well as sensitivi- Subjective tinnitus is a highly complex condition with ty and specificity will be discussed. Hearing is more than a multifactorial origin, and therefore heterogeneous pa- we are currently testing. Tests for assessing auditory pro- tient-profiles. In most people tinnitus is not traceable to cessing are speech in noise/babble perception, dichotic lis- medical causes. In most cases there is no available cura- tening, temporal resolution, temporal processing, frequen- tive treatment. cy discrimination, otoacoustic emissions, suppression of otoacoustic emissions and electrophysiology. An exagger- Standard treatment, assessment, and referral-trajectories ated debate on APD diagnosis is based on poor research are poorly defined, not well established, and often insuf- that dismisses the current Clinical Expertise on the disor- ficient. The lack of standard guidelines likely leads to un- der and focuses on either suspected APD or listening dif- treated, under-, as well as over-treated patients. There is ficulties without actually evaluating auditory processing. therefore a need for a European harmonized guideline for the assessment and treatment of tinnitus. W03 Through development and implementation of this guide- EFAS WG EDU Audiology Education line we anticipate that assessment and treatment of tinni- tus will be significantly more effective, leading to reduced Speakers: B. Kollmeier (Germany), suffering and frustration for patients, their families, and J. Wouters (Belgium), T. Pitt-Byrne (Ireland), clinicians alike. M. Pottek (Germany) Evidence for biological markers in tinnitus: A system- Summary: The Rauischholzhausen meeting about edu- atic review cation in Audiology in Europe attempted to define first requirements for a European standard in university pro- Introduction: Biological markers are an emerging field grams and professional training for the “General Audiolo- in the area of Otology. Once identified, they may provide gist” and the “Audiological Specialist”. This session will re- a means of determining the time-course or most effec- view the developments since then and the current state of tive treatment for an individual with tinnitus, presbycu- training in technical, medical and pedagogical Audiology sis or any other otologic disease or impairment. Potential across Europe. Even though a common, widely accepted tinnitus biomarkers include mutations in mitochondrial standard is still lacking, a number of successful training DNA, chromosomal mutations, proteins, hormones, im- programs have shaped the field since 1999. While medi- munoglobulin, cytokine, interleukin, vitamins. cal and educational audiology are highly dependent on the organization within the respective medical and school sys- Purpose: To evaluate what biological factors are predictive tem in each European country, technical audiology – large- of subjective tinnitus and tinnitus severity. The protocol is ly driven by international developments in hearing devic- registered at PROSPERO: CRD42017070998. es – is less bound to national peculiarities. This opens the chance for the exchange of students and course contents Methods: We conducted a systematic search employing (e.g. by E-learning modules) across Europe. As an outlook, CINAHL, PsychINFO, EMBASE, ASSIA, PubMed, Web of the German Cluster of Excellence Hearing4All develops Science, Science Direct, and EBSCO Host, using the search a course system in its Joint Research Academy that might terms:tinnitus* AND gene* OR protein OR hormone OR be used as a kind of reference program for graduate uni- immunoglobulin OR enzyme OR cytokine OR interleu- versity education in the future. kin OR lipid OR vitamin OR marker. The initial search was complemented by scanning reference lists from rele- vant systematic reviews and the included primary studies; Journal of Hearing Science · 2019 Vol. 9 · No. 1 · Supplement 11 Abstracts • 11–172 citation searching of the included primary studies using W06 Web of Science; and hand searching the last six months of key otology journals. EUSCREEN: Hearing screening for children in Europe Inclusion criteria: Human subjects with subjective tinni- tus. Searches were limited to articles in the English lan- Speakers: I. Uhlén (Sweden), A.R. MacKey guage, published in peer reviewed journals. (Sweden), A. Goedegebure (The Netherlands), A.M.L. Bussé (The Netherlands) Exclusion criteria: Animal studies, objective tinnitus, Mé- nières disease, Otosclerosis, Chronic otitis media, histo- Hearing screening of children in perspective of health ry of oncology and chemotherapy, ototoxic drugs intake, economy and general health screening offered by gov- autoimmune diseases, neurodegenerative or demyelinat- ernments. Availability of diagnostics and intervention. ing disease. Status of screening programmes across European coun- tries based on an extensive questionnaire and contacts with country representatives. Target conditions of screen- ing and diagnostics. KEYNOTE LECTURES AND STRUCTURED SESSIONS KEYNOTE 1 KEYNOTE 2 Circadian regulation of the auditory system: The importance of bilateral and spatial New insights and therapeutic implications hearing in development evidence from children with bilateral and asymmetric Speaker: B. Canlon (Sweden) hearing loss It is well-established that nearly all physiological respons- Speaker: K.Gordon (Canada) es are under circadian regulation, such as the sleep and wake cycle, feeding behavior, metabolism, cognition, im- We study consequences of asymmetric hearing in children mune responses, blood pressure, urine production, detox- with bilateral profound deafness who used a unilateral coch- ification and hormone release. It has recently been shown lear implant before bilateral implantation and children who that even the cochlea possesses a robust self-sustained had access to acoustic hearing in one ear with or without clock with ample expression of core circadian genes and a hearing aid before receiving a cochlear implant in the op- proteins in both experimental animals and humans. Cir- posite ear (bimodal). Subgroups of such children show im- cadian mechanisms alter cochlear sensitivity to noise at paired learning and memory which has consequences for different times of the day, with noise exposure during the academic achievement. Our aim is to improve these key as- active phase (night) causing permanent hearing loss, in pects in development by providing access to sound in both contrast to animals fully recovering from the same noise ears. Electrophysiological and behavioral measures post- exposure during the inactive phase (daytime). Moreover, implantation reveal benefits of bilateral implant/bimodal we revealed that circadian vulnerability to auditory in- device which are reduced with delays to bilateral hearing; sults is not restricted to noise, but it also applies to cis- auditory cortices maintain an aural preference for the first platin ototoxicity. These findings can also be extended hearing ear and asymmetries in speech detection and per- to pharmacological treatment of hearing disorders. Data ception are persistent. We thus recommend that access to will be shown suggesting that time-dependent treatment sound in both ears be provided to children as early as pos- strategies (chronopharmacology) can be highly successful sible in development. Continuing work focuses on remain- for hearing disorders. Interestingly, dexamethasone treat- ing challenges in integration of input from each ear which ment is only effective in preventing noise-induced hear- is needed to establish spatial hearing and reduce listening ing loss at specific times of the day. Treatment with dex- effort in children who have hearing loss. amethasone in mice at day (corresponding in humans at night time) is effective against noise trauma while night KEYNOTE 3 treatment is not effective. We are now proposing that cir- cadian aspects should be taken into consideration in or- Assessing all five vestibular organs: clinical der to improve the design and outcome of pharmacolog- applications in adult and pediatric (CI) ical interventions for treating hearing disorders. Finally, population circadian biology needs to be implemented to the auditory system for clinical and experimental studies, since time- Speaker: A.J. Beynon (The Netherlands) dependent rhythms appear to control important physio- logical responses in the cochlea. Conventional electronystagmography can be performed in CI