It’s Tinnitus Awareness Week – so what hope is there for sufferers?

The UK’s estimated 6 million tinnitus sufferers are often left to flounder when their GPs fail to offer the help they want. So a report this week that coloured lights, that “distract” people’s brains, may help alleviate the condition will be music to their ears. Unfortunately, close reading reveals that the research, at the University of Leicester, is yet to achieve a breakthrough.

This is Tinnitus Awareness Week, and the British Tinnitus Association is working hard to raise its profile. It has released new guidance for GPs and launched an online platform, Take on Tinnitus, for people who are newly diagnosed. But how much hope is there?

Tinnitus, which is a common, debilitating and often intractable nightmare for sufferers, remains poorly understood and hard to treat. Tinnitus is often defined as ringing in the ears when there’s no external actual ringing going on. In fact, people often say it’s more like a buzzing or hum that can drive you to distraction. The condition is thought to stem from changes in excitability and reactivity in cells in the part of the brain that deals with sound. It’s more common if you have an underlying hearing problem, and can be linked to exposure to loud noise, infections and anxiety. The WHO has warned that noise induced hearing loss (NIHL) and tinnitus is a growing global health problem, and that employers often fail to protect employees from damaging noise levels.

There is also some evidence that substandard diets make people more prone to NIHL and the tinnitus that may accompany it. More often than not, though, there’s no obvious cause or trigger. Tinnitus with hearing loss in one ear and dizziness may be signs of a benign brain tumour (acoustic neuroma) that grows on the acoustic nerve that is involved in hearing and balance.

The advice is always to see your GP, who will do the basics; check ears for wax or infection, organise a hearing test, get an urgent MRI scan if an acoustic neuroma is suspected and refer you to a local ear, nose and throat or audiology clinic. Some areas have superb audiology clinics with a specialist interest in tinnitus; others don’t. But, it’s fair to say, people with tinnitus are often disappointed by their doctor’s response.

The usual approach involves reassurance that tinnitus often improves, correcting hearing loss, sound therapy that uses soothing noises to distract the brain (including pillows with inbuilt speakers) and various coping techniques. Doctors like to fix things, so once a remediable underlying cause has been ruled out, tinnitus sufferers are often “reassured” and left to live with it. Let’s hope those coloured lights prove more effective.