Spontaneous Recovery Stats: Many Recover (3 Studies)

[attheedgeofscience]

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

It's right here...

 

[PamelaNY]

Thanks for posting. Very interesting.

 

[Bill Bauer]

I like this Medical Practice guide.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0194599814545325

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. Similarly, subjects assigned to the
"wait-list" control groups of some clinical trials show small, but
significant, improvements in tinnitus distress.28 The largest spon-
taneous improvement is seen with short duration tinnitus, younger
age, and longer intervals between pre- and post-assessment. For
example, in 1 study,29 28% of subjects with acute tinnitus (last-
ing < 6 months) improved spontaneously in a control group that
received only educational information. The severity of tinnitus can fluctuate. Hallam et al30 reviewed the psychological aspects of tinnitus and described a natural habituation process that improves tinnitus tolerance.
An observational study of 528 patients seen in otolaryngology
clinics found that, regardless of symptom duration, tinnitus
severity declined over time in 3% to 7% of patients.
15,31 Another large cohort study found that 55% of patients with
severe tinnitus reported only moderate, or mildly bothersome,
symptoms 5 years later.27 Conversely, 45% of tinnitus patients in the same cohort progressed from mildly annoying symptoms at baseline to moderate or severely annoying symptoms after 5 years. Those with persistent tinnitus, defined in the study as having had symptoms at baseline and at 5 years, were significantly more likely to report moderately or extremely bothersome symptoms compared to their counterparts with newly reported tinnitus

 

[MarkLeslie]

Question to the people behind tinnitustalk.com: Would it be possible to e-mail all of the people who joined this forum, say, before 2016 and ask them to visit tinnitustalk to vote in a poll regarding their T status? This way we could get some data on the fraction of people who recovered, fraction who got better, how long it took them to get better, etc. There could be a separate poll for people with sudden onset T, people who got their T after a one-time acoustic trauma, etc. You are in a unique position of having e-mail addresses of all of those T sufferers. If a researcher were to try to do a study on T prognosis, the researcher would have trouble collecting data, as a result of privacy...

People might not want to come back to this site and start a new thread in the "success stories" section, but it seems to me that it is likely that many will be willing to participate in such a poll.

Hopefully the results of such a survey would provide some much needed hope to the visitors of your site.

I am just brainstorming here.

I'll help.

 

[Kritish Gooriah]

Improved Sound Level Tolerance Accompanies Remission of Persistent Tinnitus in Adolescents with Clinically Normal Audiometry

Larry E. Roberts1; Tanit Ganz. Sanchez2 1McMaster University; 2University of São Paulo School of Medicine, São Paulo, Brazil

Sanchez et al. [1] found that 27.5% of 170 adolescents in a private school experienced verified tinnitus and reduced sound level tolerance (SLT) during psychoacoustic assessment with no impairment of otoacoustic emissions or clinical audiometry. Risky listening habits were near universal and not more prevalent among those experiencing tinnitus and reduced SLT. However, new cases of tinnitus can resolve over time without explicit treatment in an undetermined percentage of young adults [2]. We therefore carried out repeat measurements on 54 adolescents who returned voluntarily for study one year later. In both studies SLT was measured as Loudness Discomfort Level (LDL).

Results (1) Of the 14 subjects with verified tinnitus in the first study who returned for a second psychoacoustic measurement, 42.9% experienced verified tinnitus on retest while 57.1% did not. (2) SLT measured as LDL was reduced by 17.2 dB in repeating cases (p < 0.0001) and normal in resolving cases. (3) Hearing thresholds measured to 16 kHz were < 20 dBHL in 98.3% of ears, with only one tinnitus subject showing thresholds > 20 dBHL above 11.2 kHz. However, hearing thresholds > 4 kHz were higher in the left ear (8.33 dBHL) than the right ear (3.05 dBHL) of repeating compared to resolving tinnitus subjects (p = 0.037; all bilateral tinnitus). (4) Otoacoustic emissions did not differentiate between adolescents with or without verified tinnitus in either study. (5) Among returning adolescents those without tinnitus reported attending fewer parties and raves per week than did those with tinnitus (42.3% versus 62.5% respectively), but this difference was not statistically significant.

Conclusions There was a notable remission of persistent tinnitus in this sample (57.1% of cases), confirming previous reports that persisting tinnitus can resolve without explicit treatment in new cases in young adults [2]. Audiometric thresholds and otoacoustic emissions were clinically normal in repeating cases, although thresholds >4 kHz were elevated by ~5 dB in the left ear in repeating tinnitus. SLT was decreased in repeating tinnitus and recovered to normal levels in resolving tinnitus, confirming previous reports of a relationship to tinnitus [1]. The time course of SLT and tinnitus could
reflect hidden hearing loss followed by synaptic recovery which has been reported in animal models [3].

[1] Sci Rep, DOI: 10.1038/srep27109 1; [2] Roberts (2016), in D. Baguley & M. Fagelson, Tinnitus. Plural Press, pp. 13-33; [3] Song et al. (2016), Sci Rep DOI: 10.1038/srep25200. Assisted by NSERC of Canada.

 

[Frankie Nazzaro]

Gives hope, even though I'm doing much better than I was when I first got it. U can imagine Depression and anxiety at its finest.. but I was able to overcome that through talks with my love ones. Now I guess just hope it will just be a story if the past. Only on my 5th week so hope is high for recovery . I'm only 27

Hey i'm curious, hows your tinnitus doing? I'm 2 weeks in, also suffering tinnitus, hyperacusis as well as slight hearing loss from a gunshot. i'm only 21.

 

[Champ]

Hey i'm curious, hows your tinnitus doing? I'm 2 weeks in, also suffering tinnitus, hyperacusis as well as slight hearing loss from a gunshot. i'm only 21.

It's important that you let your brain hear other sounds along with the tinnitus. What I mean by this is you cannot put the tinnitus sound above other sounds you normally hear. It is part of your soundscape, but it's one your brain actually doesn't need. By letting the working portions of your hearing have relevance, your brain will recalibrate quite a bit.

You also need to give your brain and hearing a rest. I mean, multiple hours a day of rest. It's a guarantee you will hear your tinnitus ins the quiet room, but by letting your brain also hear the sound of your surroundings, you will help it recalibrate.

A lot of researchers now believe that silence and tinnitus are both memory based. Essentially, when the volume of your surroundings drops to zero, your brain put whatever is the "silence" memory into your conscious. Tinnitus is a painful response to silence that results from either hearing damage or a brain problem. I have not recovered from mine - I've had it five years. But I have experienced very intermittent bouts of silence since I started practicing mindfulness and letting my tinnitus compete with real sounds, with the real sounds winning in the end everytime.

I doubt mine will ever completely go away, and that's OK, but you can manage the intensity of it. Before I had my current tinnitus, I actually had very low bass tinnitus that I didn't even think of as tinnitus because it was very soothing, and it came after I went to a death metal concert. It wasn't until I was under a ton of stress and hurt my ears again in a very psychologically damaging situation that I got my high pitched tinnitus. But like I said, I have managed to get my brain to calibrate a bit. Even if my tinnitus went away, I would still do this, because my brain deserves a break sometime, tinnitus or no tinnitus.

 

[Houstontx]

Hey i'm curious, hows your tinnitus doing? I'm 2 weeks in, also suffering tinnitus, hyperacusis as well as slight hearing loss from a gunshot. i'm only 21.

I'm doing ok . I heard silence last Tuesday when I walked in a closet with no sound. I still hear the T when I'm laying down on my T ear . I've seen progression slowly but still something to stay hopeful about.

 

[Mathew Gould]

I'm doing ok . I heard silence last Tuesday when I walked in a closet with no sound. I still hear the T when I'm laying down on my T ear . I've seen progression slowly but still something to stay hopeful about.

Yeah I have silence now about 50% of the time down from no silence, I'm 9 months in.. Yeah sometimes I have tinnitus too or it's louder when I lay down on my ear. Wonder why that is??

 

[Bill Bauer]

You also need to give your brain and hearing a rest. I mean, multiple hours a day of rest. It's a guarantee you will hear your tinnitus ins the quiet room, but by letting your brain also hear the sound of your surroundings, you will help it recalibrate.

Is your advice to try to be spend a couple of hours every day in Complete Silence (as in not even the sound of a desktop computer fan)?

 

[Mathew Gould]

Is your advice to try to be spend a couple of hours every day in Complete Silence (as in not even the sound of a desktop computer fan)?

I sleep in complete silence, only sound is when my furnace turns on... This last weekend I was around loud music and was drinking and I've had light tinnitus for about 6 days straight now.. Usually I would have it 3 days on and 3 days off. The 3 days with no tinnitus, the tinnitus was sooo soft it wouldn't effect me...

Bill Bauer when you say it could take 1-2 years for the tinnitus to go away do you mean for the tinnitus to really go away completely or the person just gets used to it??

 

[Bill Bauer]

Bill Bauer when you say it could take 1-2 years for the tinnitus to go away

What I was saying is that it Could (really) go away. In other words, if it Doesn't go away after two years (or if it doesn't fade after one year), it makes sense to begin worrying that it might be permanent. There are published studies that say that T is often permanent if it doesn't go away after two years.

In the studies cited in this thread, T actually went away.

Having said this, I believe that if one doesn't stay away from noise whenever one can, one decreases the chance of it going away.

 

[Mathew Gould]

What I was saying is that it Could (really) go away. In other words, if it Doesn't go away after two years (or if it doesn't fade after one year), it makes sense to begin worrying that it might be permanent. There are published studies that say that T is often permanent if it doesn't go away after two years.

In the studies cited in this thread, T actually went away.

Having said this, I believe that if one doesn't stay away from noise whenever one can, one decreases the chance of it going away.

If the tinnitus goes away does it get gradually better and then go away or just all of a sudden disappear??

And like I previously said I have T about 60% of the days now, while before from Sept-Jan I had it 90-95% of the time and its not as loud. T began with a misaligned jaw/neck.

 

[housemzk]

If the tinnitus goes away does it get gradually better and then go away or just all of a sudden disappear??

And like I previously said I have T about 60% of the days now, while before from Sept-Jan I had it 90-95% of the time and its not as loud. T began with a misaligned jaw/neck.

@Mathew Gould - has it decreased on it's own? Or are you doing something for it? Did you go through with PT? I'm curious what type of daily or weekly regimen you've been incorporating into your life to reduce your symptoms.

 

[Bill Bauer]

If the tinnitus goes away does it get gradually better and then go away or just all of a sudden disappear??

It looks like in most cases it fades at a glacial pace. It seldom "turns off"...

 

[Mathew Gould]

@Mathew Gould - has it decreased on it's own? Or are you doing something for it? Did you go through with PT? I'm curious what type of daily or weekly regimen you've been incorporating into your life to reduce your symptoms.

I did PT on my jaw and neck, but the PT was novice stuff... I say that its gotten better on its own.

 

[Bill Bauer]

Most of the conscripts received hyperbaric oxygen
treatment, so it is not known, what the spontaneous recovery rate of symptoms was, and
how many were cured due to treatment.

Fair enough. But there are many studies listed in the posts in this thread. I don't remember the recovery rates for each and every study. I remember that several studies of seniors reported spontaneous recovery rates of over 20%, and these rates ought to be a lot higher for younger people, as a number of studies mention a strong inverse relationship between the chance of recovery and age.

 

[Bill Bauer]

But why is it then so many people who complain in this forum that they still got AAT after so long time?

As long as the recovery rate is less than 100%, there will be people who do not recover. There are tens of millions of people with T on planet Earth who have access to the internet. So it is not surprising that some of those millions of sufferers made posts on this forum.

 

[Tom Cnyc]

people who recover don't talk to the specialist. the only cases they see are long term cases. there are no legitimate studies to indicate long term prognosis - but seeming everyone I know that dealt with noise induced issues that actually calmed down and stopped wrecking their ears improved greatly.

a few cases:

- a friends father got it as a UK military chopper pilot - first year was horrid, slowly got better. still there, but totally habituated and its much much lower in volume
- friend of mine had it for ten years due to clubbing and metal shows. 4 years after he stopped going out its faded to where he can only hear it in a quiet room
- my physical therapist had it really bad for 8 months after a concert and its slowly improved since. 5 years later she gets it 1-2 days a month and its tolerable
- friend got it from shotgun with no earplugs. ears rang so bad he drank himself to sleep for 18 months. its been 4.5 years. he's mostly fine. gets a hiss 1-2 days a week that is "totally manageable". worked on garbage trucks the whole time with no earplugs.
- friend from an unrelated forum had H and T. H so bad he wore earplugs literally everywhere. 4 years later he runs a record label and just sold a song to SUBARU. He plays drums every day, his ringing comes only when he is very stressed out, tired, and alone.
- @I who love music post on MEGA T - while he didn't recover, he didn't stay in that severely worsened condition.

now a few famous people
- Neil Young couldn't be around electric guitars. released an acoustic album. Years later was on stage with pearl jam
- Jody Wisternoff still has from tinnitus but talks about the first months being so bad he could feel it vibrate his gums. This same symptoms comes and goes for me. In recent interviews he states "it's always there in quiet rooms". he plays at megaclubs and festivals
- Andy Timmons had horrible H. He now plays rock concerts

I think it's important to realize old injuries are never perfect - but in most cases there is an acute period that is much much worse, and most people here are in that phase. This isn't to diminish the long term sufferers. They do exist, and many are on this board. It's just important to keep perspective.

Protect your ears. stay healthy. passively hope for the best. it's all we can do.

I still receive frequent "likes", etc. on this post.

My own tinnitus has also improved tremendously. My hyperacusis went away 99% of the time. I go to concerts again, loud bars, practice guitar daily.

I'm of the belief system that ears can heal for many of us if given enough time and are properly treated.

 

[TheDanishGirl]

I still receive frequent "likes", etc. on this post.

My own tinnitus has also improved tremendously. My hyperacusis went away 99% of the time. I go to concerts again, loud bars, practice guitar daily.

I'm of the belief system that ears can heal for many of us if given enough time and are properly treated.

Is your T from accumulate damage from noise? When did you notice your T had gotten better?

 

[Tom Cnyc]

Is your T from accumulate damage from noise? When did you notice your T had gotten better?

It's from many years of abusing my hearing, followed by one night that was very VERY over the top with volume.

I'm 35. I've played guitar since Im 12. DJ'd at raves for years with shitty monitors pointed at my face in warehouses where the walls were not treated for acoustics, and have been active in the live music scene since my teenage years. I worked a desk job where I wore headphones for 8 hours a day for a decade.

then I went to the loudest place I'd ever been, and stayed for 3 hours. this was the anvil that broke the camels back.

If you read my posts you'll see I had very intense T, but it was intermittent even early on. In the beginning iw ent back and forth between a 10 and a 3-4. Now I go back and forth between a 2-3 and a 0-1. Most days I'm really fine. Last week I had a solid 3 for a few days but it faded again. I can't really hear it at all today.

I really started to feel OK at 14 months. About 2 months after that post I bumped. Of course, my spikes still bugged me, but they are less and less frequent these days.

 

[TheDanishGirl]

It's from many years of abusing my hearing, followed by one night that was very VERY over the top with volume.

I'm 35. I've played guitar since Im 12. DJ'd at raves for years with shitty monitors pointed at my face in warehouses where the walls were not treated for acoustics, and have been active in the live music scene since my teenage years. I worked a desk job where I wore headphones for 8 hours a day for a decade.

then I went to the loudest place I'd ever been, and stayed for 3 hours. this was the anvil that broke the camels back.

If you read my posts you'll see I had very intense T, but it was intermittent even early on. In the beginning iw ent back and forth between a 10 and a 3-4. Now I go back and forth between a 2-3 and a 0-1. Most days I'm really fine. Last week I had a solid 3 for a few days but it faded again. I can't really hear it at all today.

I really started to feel OK at 14 months. About 2 months after that post I bumped. Of course, my spikes still bugged me, but they are less and less frequent these days.

Wow, now THAT is a succes story to me! That a person who has abused their ears a lifetime still can experience T getting better in time. This gives me new hope

 

[Tom Cnyc]

Wow, now THAT is a succes story to me! That a person who has abused their ears a lifetime still can experience T getting better in time. This gives me new hope

you should have hope. I didn't, but here I am. I'm around less, but I still log in to spread positivity. I don't run from loud anymore. I've been to 5 shows in 2018 alone. I performed at one of them. It's MUCH louder on stage btw, and generally in more harmful frequencies (stage monitors tend to be EQ'd to higher frequencies b/c they "cut through" more - which allows you to hear it a bit better.

earplugs are your friend. time is your friend. keep hope alive.

 

[Contrast]

Check out:

https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/27440/investig.pdf?sequence=1

In that dissertation, the author writes (on page 35 of 77):

"Of conscripts exposed to a single shot, tinnitus was initially present in 96% and hearing
loss in 52% (I). At discharge, 23% had tinnitus, 23% had hearing loss, and 39% had
either symptom still at discharge from the military service, indicating a long-lasting
effect after exposure to only a single shot. {Note: The figures above and the law for unions and intersections from probability theory imply that 7% had both tinnitus and hearing loss. This means that 70% out of 96%, or almost 73% had recovered from tinnitus.}

Although tinnitus was present in 97% of conscripts after AAT, the majority had resolved
by the end of the military service, at which time tinnitus was still present in 32%, and
68% had resolved. Hearing loss was present in 48% after AAT and 23% persisted at the
end of service. Thus, at the last visit before discharge, tinnitus, hearing loss or both were
present in 45%, and 55% were cured. Most of the conscripts received hyperbaric oxygen
treatment, so it is not known, what the spontaneous recovery rate of symptoms was, and
how many were cured due to treatment."

{"AAT [Acute acoustic trauma] causes including single gun shots, rapid firing by machine gun, cannon firing, explosions and fire crackers"}​

Page 15:

"In a study of a terrorist bomb explosion in a municipal bus, where 22 people lost their lives and 48 were wounded, 23 patients were hospitalized, and 17 of them were followed for six months in the otolaryngologic outpatient clinic (Cohen et al., 2002). All but one patient had a perforated TM. The most common auditory complaints of these 17 patients were aural fullness and pressure (88%), tinnitus (88%), otalgia (53%), dizziness (41%) and aural discharge (53%). After the six month follow-up period, 40% of the patients initially complaining of tinnitus still had tinnitus. Tinnitus had improved in 13%, and in 47% it had disappeared by the end of the six month follow-up period."​

and, on the same page:

"In that study, the patients underwent initial examination from the first day up to 10 months after the explosion, so the frequency of acute effects is not known. Pahor found the most frequent otologic symptoms in 111 hospitalized bombing victims to be deafness, high-pitched tinnitus, TM perforations, and earache. Otologic problems were found in less than one-third of the patients. Deafness was reported in 27 cases, and tinnitus in 26 cases. Twenty patients had perforated TMs. Hearing loss was mostly in the high-tones. In that study, all but one tinnitus case resolved spontaneously under follow-up (Pahor, 1981)."​

So it looks like noise/acoustic trauma tinnitus can resolve spontaneously, by itself. If there were people who got tinnitus after their eardrums were ruptured by an explosion, who got better, surely there is a chance that we can get better...

Very interesting Bill. I know for a fact my hearing did "somewhat" improve since the initial trauma, Higher frequencies no longer sound smeared together as much as they use too.

 

[Kratos]

- Neil Young couldn't be around electric guitars. released an acoustic album. Years later was on stage with pearl jam

The Neil Young case is interesting, he has a lot of hearing loss but in interviews he has said "I still have a little bit of T".

 

[Agrajag364]

you should have hope. I didn't, but here I am. I'm around less, but I still log in to spread positivity. I don't run from loud anymore. I've been to 5 shows in 2018 alone. I performed at one of them. It's MUCH louder on stage btw, and generally in more harmful frequencies (stage monitors tend to be EQ'd to higher frequencies b/c they "cut through" more - which allows you to hear it a bit better.

earplugs are your friend. time is your friend. keep hope alive.

It's from many years of abusing my hearing, followed by one night that was very VERY over the top with volume.

I'm 35. I've played guitar since Im 12. DJ'd at raves for years with shitty monitors pointed at my face in warehouses where the walls were not treated for acoustics, and have been active in the live music scene since my teenage years. I worked a desk job where I wore headphones for 8 hours a day for a decade.

then I went to the loudest place I'd ever been, and stayed for 3 hours. this was the anvil that broke the camels back.

If you read my posts you'll see I had very intense T, but it was intermittent even early on. In the beginning iw ent back and forth between a 10 and a 3-4. Now I go back and forth between a 2-3 and a 0-1. Most days I'm really fine. Last week I had a solid 3 for a few days but it faded again. I can't really hear it at all today.

I really started to feel OK at 14 months. About 2 months after that post I bumped. Of course, my spikes still bugged me, but they are less and less frequent these days.

Was it 14 months before you had any improvement? Or significant improvement?

 

[Tom Cnyc]

Was it 14 months before you had any improvement? Or significant improvement?

The latter. Hard to say though. The first year I had a lot of physical symptoms and it all came and went day over day. Fullness, hyperacusis, tensor tympani thumping, "reactive tinnitus", ringing, buzzing. Changed every day.

 

[Agrajag364]

The latter. Hard to say though. The first year I had a lot of physical symptoms and it all came and went day over day. Fullness, hyperacusis, tensor tympani thumping, "reactive tinnitus", ringing, buzzing. Changed every day.

That's still encouraging for many here. I had some improvement by 7 months but it f***ed off by 8 months. I was told by someone in a good position to know that many cases did resolve by 12-18 months. No idea if that's true though. Would not be surprised if not.

 

[jay777]

That's still encouraging for many here. I had some improvement by 7 months but it f***ed off by 8 months. I was told by someone in a good position to know that many cases did resolve by 12-18 months. No idea if that's true though. Would not be surprised if not.

don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see

 

[Agrajag364]

don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see

I don't believe it outright but because of its source it was certainly potentially compelling information