Observations about patients who do not wish to continue wearing hearing aids in TRT

Abstract

　In TRT (Tinnitus Retraining Therapy) for patients with tinnitus and an awareness of hearing loss, acoustic therapy can be considered, however, there are patients who do not wish to continue wearing hearing aids. In this paper, we report our approaches to patients who were unable to continue TRT using hearing aids. We studied 13 patients (7 males and 6 females) who were unable to continue TRT using hearing aids out of the 44 patients (23 males and 21 females) who had tinnitus and visited the our hospital from April to December 2012. We evaluated the severity of tinnitus using the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI), a visual analogue scale (VAS) (Hours [%] of the day during which the patients were worried about tinnitus), and the Hearing Handicap Inventory for Adults (HHIA). The reasons for the discontinuation of TRT using hearing aids were a feeling among the patients that it was ineffective, and the problem of cost. The former were patients with unilateral hearing loss who had a good ability for hearing on the healthy side and did not feel the necessity of wearing a hearing aid. When they wore a hearing aid on the affected side, they did not receive sufficient benefit and did not feel any improvement in the severity of the tinnitus because of an echo effect, due to which they gave up wearing the hearing aid. A refund was issued in the latter group. In these cases, even if the patients felt that their tinnitus had improved, they returned the hearing aid early because they felt it was expensive. Therefore, we consider that it is important to adjust a hearing aid so that external sounds can be fully input into the affected side in TRT using a hearing aid, and TRT can be continued with the device for 2-3 months.