The AudioNotch Tinnitus Treatment Blog

There’s been a great deal of controversy about the actual utility of tinnitus maskers as a treatment for tinnitus (not as a mere coping aid, which is basically a completely subjective, non-scientific term. Our tinnitus masker is intended only for use as a coping aid). So what do you when you have conflicting evidence from multiple scientific experiments? You amalgamate the information into a systematic review, which wikipedia defines as follows:

A systematic review is a literature review focused on a research question that tries to identify, appraise, select and synthesize all high quality research evidence relevant to that question.

Recently, a highly regarded Cochrane Review (a type of systematic review) reviewed the efficacy of the old model of sound therapy – which involves masking tinnitus sounds, and is not the same thing as Tailor-Made Notched Sound Therapy. Consider the paper’s summary of “sound therapy” (which is really just masking therapy)

Jonathan Hobson, lead author of the new Cochrane review, said that sound therapy relies on distraction, with an additional noise — often called white noise — reducing the contrast between the patient’s tinnitus signal and the background noise. This reduces the person’s perception of the phantom sounds and the distress they cause.

The reviewers came to an interesting conclusion:

The limited data from the included studies failed to show strong evidence of the efficacy of sound therapy in tinnitus management.
The absence of conclusive evidence should not be interpreted as evidence of lack of effectiveness.

Basically, more research needs to be done to determine if masking sound therapy is effective.

Best,
AudioNotch