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A New Online Resource for PatientsThe American Academy of Otolaryngology- Head and Neck Surgery maintains a website with some of the most current information on the ears, nose, throat and related structures of the head and neck. An excellent resource for patients to find understandable answers to many of their questions. The AAO-HNS website can be launched in a new browser window by clicking on their logo below.
Black CatsDid you know... Dark animal fur contains more allergy-triggering proteins than light fur. Pet owners who have dark-colored cats are two to four times more likely to report moderate or severe allergic symptoms than those with light-colored felines, according to the American College fo Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. Stay Healthy... Blackie needn’t be banished to the back porch. Just keeping her out of the bedroom is usually enough to alleviate allergic symptoms. Behavioral Therapy for TINNITUSDoes the severity of tinnitus decrease over time, as some clinicians have thought? Does behavioral therapy help, particularly in the long term? Finding few studies that have actually addressed these questions, Andersson et al from Uppsala University, Sweden, sent questionnaires to 189 consecutive patients with severe tinnitus treated between January 1988 and March 1995. Questions concerned characteristics of the tinnitus and of hearing in general, events associated with the onset of the problem, quality of life issues and use and effects of medication, caffeine, alcohol and tobacco. Of the 146 patients (77%) who provded useable responses, most were still bothered by tinnitus at an average of 5 years later, although their tolerance of it had somewhat increased. There were indications that the tinnitus fluctuated over time. A patient’s ability to mask tinnitus with loud environmental sounds when first evaluated appeared to be a significant predictor of distress. Eighty three patients had had cognitive behavioral therapy, and they showed significantly less severe tinnitus and increased tolerance of it compared with the patients who had not had such therapy. The therapy included learning relaxation techniques, developing coping skills, practicing concentration and ditsraction skills and advice about sleep. Another approach- Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT)- was examined by Bartnick et al from the Warsaw Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing, Poland. The aim of TRT is to suppress negative emotional reactions and associations caused by tinnitus and thereby decrease or eliminate perception of it by the brain. Eventually, patients should be aware of tinnitus only when they focus their attention on it. This aim was achieved through counseling and sound therapy (use of noise generators or environmental sounds amplified through hearing aids). The authors reported results of treatment of 68 patients with tinnitus and 40 with both tinnitus and subjective hearing loss. Significant improvement was found for 52 (76.5 %) of the former and 35 (87.5%) of the latter after approximately 12 months of treatment, indicating that the presence of subjective hearing loss had no significant impact on the outcome. The authors believe this approach is very promising, but further observations on a larger patient sample are needed. Conclusions and Clinical Implications Patients experiencing tinnitus are too often told that nothing can be done and they “just have to live with it.” these studies show that an active program of intervention, using various types of psychological counseling and/or counseling combined with a tinnitus masker (environmental sounds or other noise), can markedly relieve this distressing problem. -ENT Update, Spring 2002 |
