Spontaneous Recovery Stats: Many Recover (3 Studies)

Hi @Houstontx. Is your tinnitus gone?

 

Somewhat yea I only hear it in quiet rooms or putting my head on a pillow. It’s like a electric buzzing more than anything. I would say it’s 85-90% gone How about you?

 

Dobie, 2004 never said being a permanent condition after 12 months by the way. From your own book link:

 

We don't know about the kind of experience the author refers to when he talks about "my own experience". It is possible that the patients who recover after one year never go back to see him, and he is not aware of their recovery...

 

Still skeptical but we will see.

 

@Greg Sacramento had pointed out that a link to the full version of the study above can be found at
https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q...lue+Mountains+Hearing+Study&hl=en&as_sdt=0,48

Don't let the 18% spontaneous recovery rate (during the 5 years under study) depress you. It is not that low, and also the average age of the participants in the study must have been around 65 (see Figure 2). Recall that other studies had demonstrated that the older the person, the lower is the chance of a spontaneous recovery (or the longer it takes to recover).

Table 4 is particularly fascinating. It shows that for this group of older adults, out of 2+29+25 = 56 people who reported severely annoying T at the start of the study and who had T five years later, only 25 (or 25/56 = 44.6%) continued reporting severe T five years later. This figure also shows that of those who initially had moderately annoying tinnitus (and who still had T five years later), 13.7% began having severely annoying tinnitus, and 17.9% got better and started having mildly annoying tinnitus.
"more than half of the BMHS participants who reported tinnitus at the baseline examination reported diminished annoyance of symptoms after 5 years."

 

According to
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127578
20.7% of the population has tinnitus, and of those people, 69.2% are not bothered by it. It looks like this is evidence that close to 70% of the sufferers with persistent tinnitus eventually get habituated.

 

So with those numbers, 6% of the population has debilitating tinnitus. Yeah we really need to be working towards that cure. These numbers are unacceptable.

 

They say that "3% of 20.7%" or 0.621% of the population has debilitating T. So it is 1 in 161 people. That's also unacceptable...

 

What the recovery stats of individuals who got tinnitus after an eardrum injury?

 

This link that I passed on to @Bill Bauer was done in private conversation, but this link has been posted on this board by others before and that's how I came across it. Bill and myself often discuss our conditions in private conversations.

I have mentioned before on this site that I believe that most will see a recovery and many others will have improvement. I have also mentioned on this board that I saw improvement with my first onset of just noise related tinnitus that happened about 8 years ago. It went from very severe to moderate severe over time where I went on with my life.

I'm now 65 with severe somatic neck - vein, nerve, muscle and disc degeneration. For me, my diseases in my neck (12 places) and in other places will be a challenge for any recovery. I have posted my neck conditions and diseases before. Severe somatic tinnitus may include medical hurdles to overcome when related to disease cause and age. Those with somatic reactions of just TMJ, ear wax, ETD, etc; usually will have recovery.

In conclusion, recovery is often successful for those with tinnitus.

 

I actually would guess pretty high, considering the eardrum will heal on its own.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2832848/
"for at least 1 in 100, tinnitus severely affects their quality of life"

I will be on the lookout for this.

On page 1 of this thread there is a description of a study of survivors of a terrorist bomb blast. Many of those people had their eardrums damaged, and yet most of them had eventually recovered.

You can also use Google Scholar to try to see what you can find
https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=eardrum+injury+tinnitus&hl=en&as_sdt=0,48
You might also find the following to be useful

https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...y-of-the-ear/E0FFE28705A1E5E4EDFD065C5DBCCE8D
"A spontaneous closure of the perforation with a conservative management approach was observed in 94.8 per cent of the patients" Unfortunately, they don't really talk about tinnitus in that paper.

 

Thanks for the links and details.

 

Wishing your words to be golden.

 

@Bill Bauer I just want to say a huge thanks for this thread, and the info you and others provided. After reading and hearing countless petryfing stories about T. leaving me hopeless, this was the first website/thread I came across which made me feel better and gave hope (positive thinking restored).

The info here is backed up by evidence and facts. That does wonders for me and others like me.

If I come across some interesting research paper I'll share it here 100%.

Cheers,

Jiri

 

Thank you for your kind words, Jiri!

 

Thanks for the insights that so many of you have brought to the discussion. As someone new to t (3 months) I am heartened to hear many of your positive messages. Either that it may resolve, improve, and/ or I will learn to manage.
I think each of you are incredibly brave individuals. Thank you for your messages of hope, and compassion.

 

Thanks for your insights Tomcnyc. I am new here and have been struggling since acquiring T 3 months ago. I should say i am doing much better now emotionally, as i accept that recovery and/or habituation may take some time. Im inclined to trust the stories here a little more than what I'm hearing at the ENT office. They haven't offered much hope. i understand that they just don't get T very well. ITs this big unknown on how we get it and how we recover/ cope differently. Im convinced mine was no coincidence. I had painful syringing done. My ears prior had become so plugged, with wax and mineral oil, that my head hurt, i could start to hear ringing, and it this lasted for hours until my doc's nurse could syringe........and i got T that day.
Now I have some quieter hours and some louder hours. It tends to always be there. If I'm busy i forget about it, unless its really loud. I'm struggling to habituate. I do have some successes accepting the ringing, but its work to stay positive at times.
i wish everyone all the best as they work through their T.
Rob

 

Is it the case that you never had those quieter hours two months ago?

Any sign of improvement is normally a very encouraging news.

 

I did have some quieter moments two months ago. And the T would come back. It does seem random, the ringing, it will go for days on end, then quiet down for a couple of days. It may be that I’m just getting habituated. It’s really loud this afternoon and this evening.
What is different is that when I’m engaged in an activity, i can forget about the ringing, it does dull right down. I guess more will be revealed. I will try to observe patterns.

How are you Bill? Are managing okay. Where are you with your T?

 

I was slowly improving, then I had a second acoustic trauma 3 months after T onset. That caused a big setback. Eventually I improved more but then I had a second acoustic trauma recently...

I have been reading posts here for the past 9-10 months, and the majority seem to experience improvement, even following scary spikes.

 

@Bill Bauer :

What types of exposure to noise do you consider acoustic trauma? I am just wondering .

 

Whatever causes a serious T spike that lasts for over a month.

In my case, my T was caused by a sonic toothbrush coming in contact with the opening of my ear canal for a fraction of a second. That was acoustic trauma #1. The second acoustic trauma gave me a horrific spike that lasted for over three months. It was a result of me pressing a loud phone to my bad ear.

 

How many people recover from tinnitus is likely to vary across sub-populations (as other TT-members have already stated). Attached are two recent studies:

• One that used two placebo-groups from the Auris Medical AM-101 and AM-111 studies for further investigation (it was specifically noted that those with severe/profound hearing loss (as a result of SSHL) had much lower chance of obtaining an improvement with regards to their tinnitus loudness).
• Another study where participants had tinnitus of mostly unknown origin concluded that just 11% saw a resolution with regards to their tinnitus (after six months since onset). I believe this study was part of the Frontiers Research Topic.

Pesonally, I think the title of the thread...

"Spontaneous Recovery Stats: Over 70% Recover (3 Studies)"

...is way too optimistic. For instance, if a person has been blasting his/her ears for years, and eventually develops tinnitus subsequent to that, I would not expect spontaneous recovery to occur... like... ever! Just my peronal opinion (re: sub-groups).

 

That's highly unlikely, as most people over a certain age "has been blasting his/her ears for years," i.e., most people go over recommended noise exposure for years. If you were right, spontaneous recovery would only occur in people who live in rural areas (no nightlife etc) with no noisy careers etc or teenagers or something. That is not the case.

Also looking at the second study, keep in mind that chronic does not mean permanent. While 3-6 months is the threshold for chronic (i.e.: long lasting) in medicine, that doesn't mean it is permanent after 6 months as clinical data is missing for permanent tinnitus

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...70-recover-3-studies.21441/page-5#post-284182

Again, looking at the second study, whereas most patients had permanent awareness of tinnitus at T1, for most it became intermittent at T4 (6 months).

The study in the link below is better, as it followed patients for 5 years, more than half of them improved even thought it was mostly an older sample (mean age 65.8 years)
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1b17/9111dc66129c7c0433824746ba72440c54b7.pdf

 

Well, I guess the members of this board have nothing to worry about then.

 

Thank you for posting links to these new and interesting studies!

This is helpful. Having said this, "six months" is a very short time as far as T is concerned. I wish they were to give us the figures corresponding to two or even five years after onset.

I agree. Back when I created this thread, I wasn't thinking straight as a result of loud T. If I could edit the title, I would change the words "over 70%" to "many"...

 

Again, great reasoning and deduction skills. That was exactly what I said and implied. Too bad we don't have a rolling eye smiley.

Recent onset people should pursue all available medical interventions, but that doesn't mean "if a person has been blasting his/her ears for years, and eventually develops tinnitus subsequent to that, I would not expect spontaneous recovery to occur... like... ever."

 

I found an interesting post by a Dr. Stephen Naglar (Atlanta Tinnitus Consultants, LLC) in which he states this, quoting:

"And in that regard, there are some very interesting longitudinal data collected several years ago at the Oregon Health and Science University Tinnitus Clinic. At the OHSU Tinnitus Clinic they looked at patients in their 60s and older with tinnitus that was severe enough to lead them to seek evaluation and treatment at a major university center, and they followed those patients over a number of years. Now one would think that as these patients' hearing got worse with advancing age, their tinnitus would get louder - because of the gradual loss of the natural masking effect afforded by environmental sound. Interestingly, though, as it turns out their tinnitus actually tended to get less loud with advancing age in spite of the deterioration of their hearing." (Nagler, 2015)
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References:

1. NAGLER, Stephen. Does Tinnitus get worse over time? [online]. In: . July 14, 2015, s. 1 [cit. 2018-01-01].