The Cochleural Alternating Acoustic Beam Therapy (CAABT): A pre-clinical trial.

PURPOSE

We intend to assess the effectiveness of a novel tinnitus treatment therapy, the Cochleural Alternating Acoustic Beam Therapy (CAABT) using the psychoacoustic measures, the questionnaires and rs-fMRI.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

In this study, we enrolled 11 older than 18 years old Chinese patients with normal hearing who had unilateral, chronic (longer than 6 months), sensorineural tinnitus, of frequencies between 125-8000 Hz, and an average loudness of 31 dB. The patients underwent the treatment with the CAABT method for 12 weeks and the outcomes were evaluated with tinnitus questionnaire scores, a set of psychoacoustic measures, and rs-fMRI testing before treatment and at 3 months. This was an earlier study of the controlled randomized clinical trial which was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT02774122.

RESULTS

Almost all the patients reported reduced tinnitus annoyance after the three-month treatment. The THI and VAS scores showed decreased tinnitus severity. The rs-fMRI results indicated that the right middle frontal gyrus and the right superior temporal gyrus displayed noticeable decreases of the ReHo values for the subjects between the before and after treatment, supporting the clinical evidence of significant tinnitus reduction.

CONCLUSION

The therapy seemed effective in patients of varying severities, and no side effects were observed in this trial. The CAABT can be an alternative for those who are suitable for sound therapy once a large scale of and better controlled clinical studies have validated the findings of this experiment.