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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2024 Mar 11;14(1):5900.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-55866-0.

Therapy effect of cochleural alternating acoustic beam therapy versus traditional sound therapy for managing chronic idiopathic tinnitus patients

Chunli Liu  1 , Jie Zhang  1 , Zhiwei Qi  1 , Wenhui Yue  1 , Yujie Yuan  1 , Tao Jiang  2 , Shenglin Zhang  3 , Shujun Zhang  4
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Therapy effect of cochleural alternating acoustic beam therapy versus traditional sound therapy for managing chronic idiopathic tinnitus patients

Chunli Liu et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Idiopathic tinnitus is a common and complex disorder with no established cure. The CAABT (Cochleural Alternating Acoustic Beam Therapy CAABT), is a personalized sound therapy designed to target specific tinnitus frequencies and effectively intervene in tinnitus according to clinical tinnitus assessment. This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of the CAABT and Traditional Sound Therapy (TST) in managing chronic idiopathic tinnitus. This was a randomized, double-blind, parallel-group, single-center prospective study. Sixty adult patients with tinnitus were recruited and randomly assigned to the CAABT or TST group in a 1:1 ratio using a computer-generated randomization. The treatment lasted for 12 weeks, and participants underwent assessments using the tinnitus handicap inventory (THI), visual analog scale (VAS), tinnitus loudness measurements, and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). Both groups showed significant reductions in THI scores, VAS scores, and tinnitus loudness after treatment. However, CAABT showed superiority to TST in THI Functional (p = 0.018), THI Emotional (p = 0.015), THI Catastrophic (p = 0.022), THI total score (p = 0.005) as well as VAS score (p = 0.022). More interesting, CAABT showed superiority to TST in the changes of THI scores, and VAS scores from baseline. The rs-fMRI results showed significant changes in the precuneus before and after treatment in both groups. Moreover, the CAABT group showed more changes in brain regions compared to the TST. No side effects were observed. These findings suggest that CAABT may be a promising treatment option for chronic idiopathic tinnitus, providing significant improvements in tinnitus-related symptoms and brain activity.Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov:NCT02774122.

Keywords: Chronic idiopathic tinnitus; Cochleural alternating acoustic beam therapy; Randomized controlled clinical trial; Sound therapy.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow diagram of the study protocol.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Bar chart showing the estimated marginal means ± standard errors for co-factors pre-intervention and post-intervention.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Comparison of 26 patients before and after cochleural alternating acoustic beam therapy (CAABT) (paired-samples t-test). R right hemisphere; L left hemisphere; Cb Cerebellum; MFG Middle frontal gyrus; PreCG Precentral gyrus; PCUN Precuneus; IPL Inferior parietal lobule.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Comparison of 28 patients before and after traditional sound therapy (TST) (paired-samples t-test). R right hemisphere; L left hemisphere; PCUN Precuneus; MTG Middle temporal gyrus.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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