The Long-Term Prognosis of Residual Tinnitus with Idiopathic Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Has anyone seen this research? Looks like it came out in August 2020. If I'm reading this correctly, they seem to be suggesting the median time for tinnitus recovery after SSHL is 24 months. Gives me hope!

The Long-term Prognosis of Residual Tinnitus with Idiopathic Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Objectives:
To analyze the factors affecting the long-term prognosis of tinnitus accompanied with unilateral idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL).

Design:
A cohort study.

Setting:
Academic hospital.

Participants:
A total of 161 patients with sudden hearing loss accompanied by tinnitus were enrolled. All the patients had two separate telephone follow-ups and were asked about changes in tinnitus.

Main outcome measures
The severity of tinnitus at admission and the outcome at discharge were assessed in terms of the patients’ sex, age, level of hearing loss, type of audiogram, and so on.

Results and Conclusions
Initial tinnitus level was remarkably associated with tinnitus efficacy at discharge and was an independent risk factor for the long-term prognosis of residual tinnitus after SSNHL (odds ratio 0.722, 95% confidence interval 0.550-0.949, p = 0.019), and the median recovery time was 23.00 ± 3.80

 

Same here! Just one year in! How about you?

 

Thanks for sharing, this gives me some hope.

 

I'm no expert but I'm not sure how I can rate this paper.

They interviewed tinnitus patients who experienced SSHL three times and out of these interviews they conclude that tinnitus will recover, on average, after 2 years.

How did these people recover? Is it subjective (they habituated)? Did the tinnitus heal on its own or did these people undergo treatment?

It seems to still be a pre-print. This means that other researchers have not peer-reviewed it yet (for quality, among other things).

 

Well, when they talk about the gatekeeping interface of the brain, the assumption is that it needs time to adapt to the new "bad data".

 

This is the treatment all of these patients received:

All patients received 40 mg of intravenous methylprednisolone for 5 consecutive days and hemodilution agents for 10 days, including 87.5 mg of intravenous EGb-761 (Dr. Willmar Schwabe GmbH & Co., Germany) every day and 5 BU of intravenous batroxobin (Beijing Tobishi Pharmaceutical Co.), the first dose was doubled, and every other day based on fibrinogen levels.​

I'm not sure how that compares to treatments any of us have received. I'm taking Prednisone right now but none of these other things.

 

Of course with all those treatments it is no wonder they recovered LOL.

The only stuff I was ever given was Prednisolone and I had to beg to get Pentoxifylline and antivirals. Which I finally got. Didn't make any difference though.

Steroids are very iffy and half the time don't do much at all and can make distortions either better or worse depending on the cause. In my case they introduced mild distortion in my right ear but the affected ear was initially my left ear.

I don't think it was sensorineural hearing loss though, I think it was just a huge tinnitus spike from previous damage - unsure but could have been from my Sony WH1000XM4 headphones where the left cup was dinged and caused an incredibly loud sound in my left ear. I measured the cup with an iPad microphone and soundmeter and it registered between 130-140 dB depending on how hard I tapped it with a pen and that is absolutely enough to cause damage especially as I have a form of autism with super sensitive hearing. I also add that it was about 5 or 6 dings, not just the one over a period of about a year. That probably did the damage but can't say for sure.

 

Jeez... you sound like me. Is that a thing? Is there a name for it? I have autism and I know I have super sensitive hearing.

 

So this isn't about natural recovery, instead it is about this specific treatment taking two years for significant improvement?

Also, what journal published this?