抄録
Twenty-three patients with continueous tinnitus were treated by masking noise. Masking noise is generated from the audiometer and the tinnitus masker is a modification of the hearing aid.
In eighteen patients among 23, tinnitus was reduced or disappeared after receiving the masking noise treatment. The effect of masking was clearly better in the cases who received complete and long term masking. In five patients, however, tinnitus remained unchanged after the treatment. Most of these cases had severe hearing loss and their tinnitus could not be masked by masking noise from the tinnitus masker. The tinnitus masker which we used in this study generates a maxium of 70 dB white noise.
From these results it can be concluded that the masking method is useful for the treatment of tinnitus. However, it is also true that this method should be improved to obtain better results.
