How Hearing Aids and Sound Therapy Help Tinnitus - Tinnitus Management

Tinnitus Management

Tinnitus Management

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Sound Therapy & Prosthetic Management

Hearing Aids:

The use of hearing aids has been accepted as standard in the management of tinnitus since the 1950s in the NHS. Where there is an aidable hearing loss in addition to a troublesome tinnitus, appropriate hearing aids usually have a very positive effect and reduce tinnitus perception significantly

Sound Therapy

Sound enrichment is widely accepted as being helpful, and certainly many people find the use of recorded nature sounds e.g. sound waves helpful to aid sleep

Worn sound generators are advocated as part of TRT (Tinnitus Retraining Therapy) - the original tinnitus therapy developed by Mr Jonathan Hazell. Most Audiologists prescribe sound generators as a "go to" for help with tinnitus.

More about Sound Therapy

My own personal experience as a clinician is the same as others in the field - hearing aids do have a very significant effect on tinnitus perception, often reducing it to being barely audible during hearing aid use

Although I have listed hearing aids separately above, they are part of "sound therapy" of course. However, many who have tinnitus do not have a hearing loss - at least not a hearing loss that can be measured using standard audiometers that measure hearing levels between 250 Hz and 8KHz. There may be some hearing loss at higher frequencies i.e. above 8KHz; indeed recent research was able to demonstrate this:

Sereda, M., Hall, D.A., Bosnyak, D.J., Edmonson-Jones, M., Roberts, L.E., Adjamanian, P., Palmer, A.R. (2011) Re-examining the relationship between audiometric profile and tinnitus match, International Journal of Audiology 50 (5): 303-12)

It is still, however, the case that even if hearing loss is identified in the upper range of frequencies, most hearing aid specifications do not amplify beyond 9KHz maximum; indeed most reach well below those frequencies


Tinnitus Management

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