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Tinnitus: Tinnitus Retraining Therapy
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Tinnitus [I]s the perception of sound that has no external source. It affects 17% of the general population, or about 44 million Americans. For some it can be debilitating, leading to anxiety, sleep disorders, depression, and other physical and emotional symptoms that upset your life. It used to be that sufferers were told to “learn to live with it.” Now, research reveals that Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT) can help the majority of those afflicted with tinnitus. With a success rate of over 80%, TRT uses a combination of directive counseling and sound therapy to target specific systems, to decrease the perception of tinnitus. This reduces the annoyance of the sounds and the negative emotions that often accompany them.
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Tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT) combines low-level steady background sounds with one-on-one patient/clinician directive counseling. The patient enriches his or her background sound environment for a minimum of eight hours a day usually with in the ear sound generators. This combination of therapies helps people habituate (essentially grow unaware of) the sound of their tinnitus. Tinnitus Retraining Therapy can take 12-24 months before a patient no longer needs the in the ear sound generators. The goal of TRT is to have the patient no longer aware of their tinnitus (habituation) except when they focus their attention on it, and even then the tinnitus is not annoying or bothersome.
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Tinnitus retraining therapy is useful in many cases to reduce the tinnitus and/or its impact on the individual. Delivered through CEI Audiologists, TRT is judged as beneficial by over two-thirds of patients completing the treatment regimen.
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Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT) was developed by Dr. Pawel Jastreboff and Dr. Jonathan Hazell in the 1980s. Dr. Jastreboff is a neurophysiologist who has conducted research at universities such as Yale, U. of Maryland, and at this time, he is located at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
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The method preferred by medical practitioners is "tinnitus retraining therapy", or TRT for short. The aim of TRT is to distract patients from it in their daily activities, so that instead of seeming to be a loud noise, it becomes an insignificant sound among a host of others. TRT involves a team of experts from various different fields. In addition to doctors and psychologists, the audiologist has an important part to play in TRT. "Tinnitus control instruments" (TCI) is the name given to the small instruments which are similar to hearing aids and are worn inconspicuously behind the ear or in the ear. They generate a quiet, therapeutic sound which the patients find pleasing.
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Teresa Heitzmann of the University Hospital of Navarre in Spain has recommended TRT (Tinnitus Retraining Therapy) treatment , based on the neurophysiological model, for those suffering from tinnitus. Heitzmann points out that the aim of the treatment is to get the patient to become accustomed to the "noise." To achieve this, therapeutic advice and sound therapy are used. The father of TRT is professor Pawel J. Jastreboff, who has defined tinnitus as a phantom auditory perception perceived only by the person. On applying the neurophysiological model in the university hospital, Heitzmann concluded that getting used to the tinnitus and thereby, achieving the cessation of discomfort, occurred in between 80% and 84% of patients, including, at times, a higher proportion. It is the treatment that has the highest success rate currently, she reports. Full Story
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Tinnitus Retraining Therapy