Tinnitus may appear as a symptom in a large number of pathologies, like congenital, infectious, neoplastical, neurological, traumatic, metabolical, vascular or mixed. It is presented with variable intensity, and, in its most severe form, may even undergo patient into suicide. Therefore, the differential diagnosis must be done carefully, based on different kinds of complementary tests like pure tone audiometry, imitanciometry, auditory brainstem responses and nuclear magnetic resonance. In this article, we show a case of tinnitus secondary to a rare anatomic alteration of the basilar artery, named dolichomegabasilar, leading to compression of the eighth cranial nerve, to emphasize the importance of the complementary tests on investigation and management of the tinnitus patient.
tinnitus; dolichomegabasilar; vascular compression
