Cicadas have arrived in Chicago, but tinnitus sufferers face constant noise year-round

CHICAGO - The cicadas have arrived and are going to be in the Chicago area for about a month.

The noise they make can be as loud as a motorcycle engine, but the good news is, we won't have to tolerate that sound for too long.

Still, imagine having to live with constant noise or ringing in your ears every single day. That's the situation for millions of Americans who suffer from tinnitus.

Northwestern Medicine is raising the flag on another condition you may not know about, called "pulsatile tinnitus."

It's most commonly caused because of issues with blood vessels in the head and neck that results in a whooshing sound in one or both ears.

"We've had patients who are just bothered by the fact that this is a noise that they don't know where it's coming from. So that's sort of the milder version. At the other extreme, I've had patients who their quality of life was so bad that they were having sort of bad thoughts, like suicidal thoughts. I've had patients who had to compress their own jugular vein to be able to have a conversation," said Ali Shaibani, MD, with Northwestern Medicine.

There are treatments for this condition that include medication, surgery and self-management techniques.

Northwestern Hospital specializes in this type of condition at its pulsatile tinnitus clinic.

It's estimated that 5 million Americans with tinnitus actually suffer from this specific type.