Spontaneous Recovery Stats: Many Recover (3 Studies)

My ENT was also pretty quick, the audiologists have more time. But what can an ENT do? They can't do anything about it. The only thing they can do is explain that there might be a chance of it to get better but he can't give guarantees. My ENT told me because I asked him specifically.

My guess is that they don't say it can recover because some people don't recover and then they get patients that were told they would recover but they aren't. Get what I'm saying?

But still more info would be HIGHLY appreciated. Luckily for us there is this site.

 

They could tell the patients about likelihoods, probabilities, and odds...

 

They could and they should. But they don't because, I think, they don't want their predictions to haunt them later on.

But tinnitus overall is just a subject where everyone just shrugs their shoulders because a lot of people habituate eventually. And that's the problem that we are facing. It is not a serious problem yet.

 

Think they just don't know and there aren't any studies, plus they don't follow up with patients.

 

The problem would be partially solved if they were to follow up with their patients...

 

Reading this topic, I would like to add the following link:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0194599814545325
It states in page 5; "Tinnitus may improve spontaneously. In 1 cohort study,
nearly 50% of patients with significant tinnitus (moderate severity, sleep problems, or both) improved after 5 years, with 43% of those improved reporting complete resolution and the
remaining 57% reporting only mild symptoms.26 In another study,27 82% of patients who reported tinnitus at baseline had
persistent tinnitus after 5 years, suggesting close to a 20% rate of
spontaneous improvement."

So there's hope for the newly onsets.. I registered specifically to post this, since myself, I am also struggling with my tinnitus.

 

Thank you so much for posting this link, @Berik ! I also decided to register on this site, just to post the link in this thread. I read many papers about tinnitus, and I see that the paper you posted is unusually informative.

Here is a link to the study (Nondahl et al.) cited in your paper(Tunkel et al.) (the study where "nearly 50% of patients with significant tinnitus ... improved after 5 years, with 43% of those improved reporting complete resolution):
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1b17/9111dc66129c7c0433824746ba72440c54b7.pdf

One thing to keep in mind regarding Nondahl et al. study is that it involved mostly adults over the age of 50 at the start of the study (see page 2). Yet, according to Tunkel et al., "The largest spontaneous improvement is seen with short duration tinnitus, younger age, and longer intervals between pre- and post-assessment." Some of the patients included in Nondahl et al.'s study were in their 80s and 90s! So younger people can reasonably expect even better prospects than that implied by Nondahl et al. study (i.e., more than 50% improve, with about a quarter completely recovering). Another interesting finding in Nondahl et al.'s study is: "For every 0.26 mmol/L increase in total cholesterol at baseline, there was a 4.2 percent higher risk of developing tinnitus." So it may make sense to try to lower your cholesterol (assuming tinnitus doesn't cause cholesterol to increase, which could be the case if T causes someone to stop caring about their diet).

Nondahl et al. study also reports results for people who had mild tinnitus at the beginning of the study (these results were not mentioned in Tunkel et al.'s study). Five years later, 39.6% of those patients reported having no tinnitus (see page 8).

The study that suggested "close to a 20% rate of spontaneous improvement" (as quoted in Tunkel at al.) was Gopinath et al. That study was also a study of older adults (over 49 years old).
https://www.researchgate.net/profil...r-Adults-The-Blue-Mountains-Hearing-Study.pdf

Tunkel et al. also reported on the findings of Nyenhuis et al. as follows: "28% of subjects with acute tinnitus (lasting < 6 months) improved spontaneously in a control group that received only educational information."
https://www.researchgate.net/profil...lled_Study/links/5583cab408aefa35fe30d396.pdf

This study reports (on page 6) that 39% of the participants had dropped out. On average, noncompleters were younger than the people who didn't drop out. It is possible that many of those who dropped out had experienced a significant improvement in their T (or even a spontaneous recovery).

The study reported spontaneous improvement in 28% of sufferers. However, I read the study and I had trouble figuring out their horizon - how long did it take for 28% to report improvement. Page 10 seems to imply that their horizon was three months, but I am not sure. It appears that the horizon in this study was definitely less than a year. Hopefully more sufferers experience spontaneous recovery at longer horizons...

 

Once people learn more about T, their first reaction is to try to find out the chance that it will be permanent. See for example posts like
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/tinnitus-for-5-weeks.21534
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/newbie-concerns.21738 (question #9)
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/tinnitus-for-5-days.21578/#post-247919
and there are many more examples.

This thread provides answers! @Steve , would it be a good idea to make this thread sticky? It now contains links to a number of good studies that can give one a sense of the probability that one will experience an improvement or a recovery.

 

Hi Bill and apologies for not replying sooner. I moved home last Thursday, to a different area, there was way more work involved than I thought there would be. Back on it now though!

We're working up a new area, a place where we aim to send people to straight away. We want to make it a space that gives this sort of information so people don't feel as lost as I know I felt when I first got it - which leads to a potential downward spiral of concern and to only reading the negatives.

I'm also going to work up the survey very soon, gathering data from people who signed up to TT specifically to find help will be very valuable to this area.

 

@Bill Bauer @Jake007 I got the same vibe. My ENT actually laughed when I told her I trialled hearing aids for a week. She told me I'm much to young and my hearing loss is much to minor for hearing aids.

 

Sounds great! Thank you.

 

So what's the time-frame on the 67 % recovery?

 

3-6-12 months?

 

@Steve Perhaps the survey could ask whether people had gone out of their way to protect their ears from moderately loud noises (e.g., wearing earplugs outside, not using a vacuum cleaner or blender). It could also ask what supplements/vitamins they have taken. Something like this may reveal a certain supplement that many people who got better have taken (or whether those people have taken steps to protect their ears).

 

Sounds good.

I'm going to sort out a subscription to an online survey tool this week, once I have a prototype survey I'll post it here.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4912237/
"In acute Idiopathic Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss, tinnitus loudness decreased rapidly in cases of mild-moderate hearing loss, and tinnitus had completely resolved in two-thirds of patients after 3 months. Hearing recovery preceded tinnitus resolution. When associated with severe-profound hearing loss, tinnitus improved significantly less. Complete hearing recovery and full tinnitus remission were both about three times more frequent in mild-moderate hearing loss patients than in severe-profound cases. Improvement in tinnitus loudness over time can be approximated by a negative exponential function."

 

This would seem to support the hypothesis that a recovery in the hearing has a (physiological) positive outcome on the T.

 

How long did it take them to recover?! And does this count only for those with hearing loss or also people with only tinnitus without any hearing loss?

 

Well that's depressing for my severe hearing loss. Plus, there's another reference to three months.

However, it does say that tinnitus is still present 12 months later for 60 percent of patients with severe hearing loss. So 40 percent recovered after the initial three months?! Am I reading that correctly? Hey, I'll take even that slim hope.

 

I believe this study focused only on those who had T as a result of sudden unexplained hearing loss. Two thirds of those with only mild hearing loss recovered by the three month mark. It looks like the above is saying that about 10% of those with severe unexplained hearing loss ended up recovering within three months.

The other studies mentioned in this thread looked at people with T as a result of acoustic trauma.

 

And did those people with acoustic trauma evently recover?

 

"On the other extreme, studies enrolling ISSNHL patients with more severe hearing loss show only small to moderate hearing recovery and small to moderate reductions in tinnitus incidence, if at all (11,12); for example, 12 months after onset tinnitus was still present in 60% of patients with severe ISSNHL"
You are right. I can't think of another way of interpreting the above.

Here is the link to the abstract of the relevant study (#11 above):
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1097/mlg.0b013e3180316d3b/full
It looks like the patients in that study received prednisone. Where you given prednisone?

I am sure that T had improved by the end of 12 months in many of those in the unlucky 60% group.

 

Go to the first page of this thread
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/spontaneous-recovery-stats-over-70-recover-3-studies.21441/
and read posts #1 and #3 (from the top). Those posts justify the title of this thread - as many as 70% achieve recovery.

 

And this was for people who received intratympanic steroid injections?

Please let me be in the 40 percent!

 

"Methods: In a randomized, prospective, double-blind, multicenter clinical trial, we recruited 81 patients with ISSHL. Patients were randomly allocated to pulse therapy (300 mg dexamethasone for 3 consecutive days followed by 4 days of placebo) or control treatment (prednisone 70 mg per day tapered in steps of 10 mg per day to 0 mg). The primary outcome was hearing recovery as measured by pure-tone audiometry and speech audiometry after 12 months."

It looks like they were just given oral prednisone. I've seen other studies saying that oral prednisone and injections achieve similar results (injections are possibly somewhat better).

I hope you are part of the 40%!

 

Bill what do you think my stats are?
Sudden hearing loss, now my hearing is fine still have mild T , in month 2 and a few days...

 

The authors of that study wrote "Hearing recovery preceded tinnitus resolution." You are part of the group where two thirds had achieved recovery. But in your case you had already experienced hearing recovery. So your chances of T resolving are higher than 67%. Also, I believe you mentioned in another thread that you have been seeing some improvement with your T. If you are like other people I talked to, you ought to continue to improve. Make sure to protect your ears, to ensure that you don't experience any disappointing setbacks.

 

I am hoping I am in the 67 percent!

 

Ok, but why is it then so many people here who complain that they still got AAT after so long time? Thi

But why is it then so many people who complain in this forum that they still got AAT after so long time? Are most of the sufferes here with hearing loss? This study does give hope though

 

People with a bad outcome are over-represented on this forum. People who recover don't come here. As long as it is not the case that 100% recover, you would expect lots of people to have T a long time after an acoustic trauma. According to that study 30% don't recover. This group is over-represented on this forum.