Neuro-Music-Therapy for Patients With Chronic Tinnitus - a Controlled Clinical Trial

German Center for Music Therapy Research

Status

Completed

Conditions

Tinnitus

Treatments

Behavioral: Neuro-Music-Therapy according to the Heidelberg Model

Behavioral: Counselling

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT01845155

CMTR-TC-02

Details and patient eligibility

About

BACKGROUND: Tinnitus is a nonspecific symptom of hearing disorder characterized by the sensation of buzzing, ringing, clicking, pulsations, and other noises in the ear. Despite a variety of treatments, many patients with chronic tinnitus ask for more active ways in coping with their tinnitus. Gold standard treatment in chronic tinnitus is a comprehensive directive counseling explaining the underlying mechanisms leading to the tinnitus percept. Therefore a neuro-music therapeutic treatment based on a bio-psycho-social framework was developed and compared to a counselling-only control group.

INTERVENTION: two standardized protocols for tinnitus therapy were defined ("neuro-music therapy" vs. "counselling")

Enrollment

300 patients

Sex

All

Ages

18+ years old

Volunteers

No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Clinical diagnosis of chronic tinnitus persisting for a minimum of 6 month
Adults, aged 18 or over
Patients are able to understand, read and speak German fluently
Patients are able to give written informed consent
tinnitus with determinable centre frequency

Exclusion criteria

Tinnitus related to anatomic lesions of the ear, to retrocochlear lesions or to cochlear implantation
Tinnitus is concomitant symptom of a known systemic disease (such as Menière's Disease, vestibular schwannoma, endolymphatic hydrops)
Status following craniocerebral trauma, cervicogenic or stomatognathic tinnitus
Tinnitus is neither noisiform nor tonal (cricking, clacking, rumbling) or has different sound components or is pulsatile, intermittent or non-persistent
Severe hearing impairment (greater than 50 decibel hearing loss (dB HL) in the region of the centre tinnitus frequency)
Severe hyperacusis
One or two sided deafness
Clinical diagnosis of severe mental disorder or psychiatric or neurological disease (psychosis, epilepsy, Parkinsons's disease, dementia, alcohol or drug abuse)
History of severe ischemic disorder (previous stoke, previous heart attack, peripheral arterial occlusion disease)
Inability to discontinue drugs known to be associated with tinnitus (high-dose aspirin, quinidine, aminoglycosides) or psychotropic medication prior to entry into the study
Patients are not able to understand, read and speak German fluently
Patients are not able to give written informed consent