People who experience ringing in their ears, or tinnitus, are invited to participate in a University of Iowa study examining new treatments. Richard Tyler, MD, audiologist at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, talks about tinnitus:
What is tinnitus - or ringing of the ears? What causes it?
It's a sound people hear in their ears or head that's actually not supposed to be there. It's most commonly caused by noise exposure, but it can be caused by the normal aging process, head injury, or some kinds of medications. And often the cause is unknown.
Is their a cure?
It's important to point out that there are two types of ringing in the ears or sounds in the ears.
- One is caused by middle ear problems and that's often caused by abnormal blood flow or muscle twitching, and if that's the case, you should be seen by an otologist and some of those can be treated.
- The other more common types of tinnitus are associated with a sensory neuro hearing loss. In that situation, unfortunately, at this point there is no cure.
By that I mean there is no medication or surgery that can make it go away. It's a real problem, and there are lots of people now working on a cure, and hopefully in the next few years there'll be some kind of medication or perhaps some electrical stimulation - some implanted device - that can turn it off. But at present, there is no cure.
How is it currently treated?
At present the best approach for people is to appreciate and distinguish that there's the tinnitus and there's the reaction to the tinnitus. There are many well-established counseling procedures to help people accommodate and understand and develop coping strategies in their reactions to the tinnitus.
What is special about the new treatment you are studying?
This is a more comprehensive treatment that I refer to as counseling and sound therapy. We have several counseling sessions that involve understanding the causes and understanding people's reactions to it and suggestions on how to change their reactions.
There are sessions dealing with accommodating to the hearing problems caused by tinnitus and the often associated hearing loss at the same time.
There are also counseling sessions associated with this treatment that help people learn how to get to sleep at night more easily because one of the problems of this is that it often interferes with getting to sleep at night. I'm sure you can imagine when you're in a quiet bedroom and you're trying to get to sleep that this persistent ringing noise can be a real problem. One of the focuses of our counseling treatment has to do with helping people get to sleep at night.
And then the other part of the counseling session has to do with concentration. Again, people trying to read the newspaper or focus on a hobby often have difficulty with this screeching noise in the background.
The other part of the new treatment has to do with what we refer to as sound therapy and sound therapy involves the use of low level background noise either through wearable devices or non-wearable devices that is a whooshing noise like a "ssssshhhh" and that sound at a low enough level can just take the edge off or reduce the tinnitus and make it easier for people to function.
Who are you looking for to participate in this tinnitus study and what will participants be asked to do?
People that have problematic tinnitus, that is they have tinnitus that is a problem for them, are welcome to participate in the study. We'll measure their tinnitus. They will be asked to fill out some questionnaires about the kinds of problems it creates and issues relating to their anxiety or sleep problems if they're having sleep problems. They will go through the counseling sessions, which usually take three or four visits over a six month period.
We bring them back in at six months and at 12 months. We want to make sure any gains that we've seen are still present and we also have to do some of the measurements over again.
What are you hoping to determine with this study?
There are three groups in the study and we expect all groups to benefit. We're trying to see if slight variations of the sound therapy treatment benefit some types of tinnitus sufferers and other kinds of variations of the sound therapy treatment benefit other kinds of tinnitus sufferers.
If someone would like to learn more about the study, whom should they call?
If they're interested in participating, we'd love to hear from them. They should contact Anne Gehringer at 353-8760 or anne-gehringer@uiowa.edu. |
