Tinnitus therapy offers hope to thousands

The therapy is designed to “reset” auditory nerve cells in the brain to stop them misfiring.

Known as Acoustic Co-ordinated Reset (CR) Neuromodulation, it reduced tinnitus symptoms in three-quarters of trial patients.

The £4,500 treatment is currently only available to private patients, but the trial results could pave the way to it being offered freely on the NHS.

An estimated 10 per cent of the UK population suffers from tinnitus, in which ringing, buzzing, roaring and other sounds are heard.

Results from the trial, led by Professor Peter Tass at the Julich Research Centre in Germany, will be presented at a British Medical Association conference tomorrow and also appear in the journal Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience.

Acoustic CR Neuromodulation has been available in Germany since 2010, where it has been used to treat more than 2,000 patients.

Mark Williams, an audiologist at the Tinnitus Clinic in London, which uses the treatment, said: “As the first treatment for tinnitus to remove rather than mask symptoms, clinical evidence will hopefully open this treatment to a wider range of patients.”

Acoustic CR Neuromodulation was developed from therapies for neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s that involve stimulating neurons with probes sunk deep into the brain.

But unlike invasive deep brain stimulation, all it requires is for patients to wear special headphones for a few hours a day.

The headphones emit a series of tones tuned according to the characteristic frequency of the patient’s tinnitus.

This is said to disrupt the rhythmic firing patterns of tinnitus-creating auditory nerve cells.

The study involved 63 patients, who received genuine and “dummy” placebo treatments.

Significant benefits to the treated patients were seen within 12 weeks, and persisted over ten months. The Tinnitus Clinic is funding a UK trial in a larger patient group at Nottingham University.

It is also submitting an appraisal application to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which could lead to the treatment being made available on the NHS in England and Wales. It would also be open for consideration by clinicians in Scotland who could apply for it to be used for patients through Health Improvement Scotland.

Tinnitus can lead to loss of sleep, depression and anxiety, and have a severe impact on domestic and working life.

The condition is incurable and most treatments rely on helping patients cope with and ignore the symptoms.