Early-phase outcome of Tinnitus Retraining Therapy and comparison of sound therapy measures

Abstract

Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT) consists of directive counseling and sound therapy. As sound therapy, patients are told to use the following competing auditory stimuli to achieve habituation a sound generator, hearing aid, or environmental sound enrichment, and in most cases a sound generator is recommended and adapted for individual use. In this study we retrospectively investigated the efficacy of sound generators and environmental sound enrichment in the early phase of TRT by evaluating differences in Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) scores. The THI is a validated self-report tinnitus handicap measure with internal consistency reliability and construct validity, and a 20-point or greater score change is considered statistically significant. The early-phase out-comes of TRT for the severely handicapped cases showed significant improvement in THI scores in both sound therapy alternative groups (sound generator or environmental sound enrichment). However, the difference in improvement level between the two groups was not significant. These results indicate that the selection of sound therapy modalities could be instructed accordingly to the case treated.