I am a non-combat vet and I have it. I already had tinnitus but I developed the somatosensory tinnitus after a subsequent work related noise exposure.
It's called a tenotomy of the middle ear muscles. MEM is a very under diagnosed type of severe tinnitus where both the middle ear muscles go into spasm, either continuous or rhythmic. I feel a lot of the severe sufferers on here have MEM and don't realise it. I didn't for nearly 14 months.
Why do you say you don't think they realize it? I thought it made a pretty distinctive sound. I've only experienced a loud thumping in my right ear once. It was very fast and lasted a couple seconds, but very different from my other tinnitus.
From my experience and reading others' experiences, the type of 'tinnitus' or noise associated with MEM is radically different. The thumping/rumbling sound is generally the Tensor Tympani but the Stapedius sound can vary very much from person to person. Mine was a constant buzzing and rhythmic tinnitus misdiagnosed as 'pulsatile tinnitus'.
Misinformation or hopium to the max there bud.
No, not at all.
Though I do hope from her previous comments that a somewhat less leisurely pace is a real possibility. Obviously this is dependent on the actual results coming out clearly positive without side effects and the FDA approval process.
I hope so! I think someone who is familiar with this process said they could have someone already working on the paper process and then it's just plugging in the results which should be processed by computing.
There is a podcast on the American Tinnitus Association's website with Dr. Shore from just before the pandemic froze everything by a year. In that she was discussing trying to rapidly move to commercialization after the conclusion this study. I don't know whether phases apply to devices in the same way they do medicines, I can't recall seeing "phases" attached to any of her studies.
You don't know. It could be the study ended and that they are already unblinded. I would expect some preliminary results within 2-3 months. Keep in mind that hopefully there are investors onboard by now too that would benefit from that.
And if you had bothered reading this thread instead of trying to be too clever for your own good, just recently someone asked Dr. Shore and she confirmed they're being unblinded in April. And things don't happen magically fast after that.
On the clinical trial webpage it says: "Preferably onset of tinnitus less than one year ago, but present for at least 6 months. Tinnitus should be bothersome."
I seem to recall in the paper from her first study that participants all had pretty significant THI scores (I hate THI as a metric) like 50-90ish. I can't imagine why she would do a study focused on mild sufferers.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the mean TFI score was 29 and reduction was barely 7 points. 10 of the subjects had clinically significant reductions of 13+ points and two had complete elimination of their tinnitus. More detail is needed to see who had 13+ point reductions. I'm sure there is a subset this will work very well for but, as for universally treating all tinnitus, it seems poor. It would be great if we could get results like the Korean study (way worse study) but I don't expect it. That is my take.
These tight recruitment criteria have always been the turd in the punchbowl for me. There's also the anecdotal evidence (and various study evidence I believe) that suggests natural habituation will often occur for early onset tinnitus sufferers within a year or so. So without disambiguation, the big question will remain, was it the device or natural habituation that remedied the patient?
It's great to see your optimism... but I'd take a more sober view. As you stated, the success stories popping up seem to be for a small sub-set of patients.
Exaflops are currently about 2. In five years time that will be zettaflops or 500 times the supercomputing power of now. Not to mention Quantum computers. This type of processing power allied with AI will bring treatments we find impossible to envisage right now. All in my opinion of course, but I think this is the decade of medical revolution.
I will say though the thing that gets me more excited was the mean reduction of tinnitus loudness by ~8 dB. I've read arguments about whether that really would equate to a 50% reduction in loudness as it would for real sounds, but if I could get that kind of response it would make a real difference, maybe even enough of a difference to make the tinnitus more of a shrug event rather than a daily burden.
That was the exciting thing, right? That there was a true control and that only the real treatment during the treatment had the effect. Afterwards or during the sham treatment people reverted to baseline. I mean we'll see when this big study comes out (maybe the whole thing is a dud), because 20 people is a real small study, but I am optimistic that whatever was seen in this is differentiated from an habituation effect.
Great point about the tinnitus loudness. A 50% reduction would be epic.
Member
