Course of Symptom

Acute Phase

The acute phase of tinnitus is understood to be the time from the first appearance of the symptoms until at most six weeks afterwards. Your first steps should be to go to your family doctor or to an ENT doctor, who can take the necessary diagnostic and therapeutic measures.

Subacute Phase

The subacute phase is understood to be a transition phase from six weeks until three months after the first appearance of the tinnitus. At this point all diagnostic and orthodox medical measures are usually completed, so that many patients are confronted with the fact that the treatment results are simply inadequate .

This recognition leads often to further uncertainty and a worsening of the symptoms. To improve their situation sufferers develop strategies of behaviour (e.g. avoiding loud background noise), which all too often lead to the opposite result. Hearing takes on an increasingly more important function for the patient; more and more attention is given to hearing responses. This causes a focusing on the tinnitus to develop and the disturbance through the tinnitus increases.

Even in this phase the possibilities for treatment are diverse and effective, in that the patient is actively supported in learning constructive behaviour in order to achieve a defocusing of attention away from the tinnitus, leading to it being totally ignored.

Chronic Phase

Chronic tinnitus is understood to be the phase where the symptoms already exist for longer than 3 months. Once they have reached this phase many sufferers assume that there is now really nothing more that can be done. This assumption is definitely wrong! Our study with 700 patients clearly shows that the success of the treatment is independent of the length of the ailment. Even after years of enormous problems through tinnitus, considerable relief can be achieved for our patients, in many cases leading to the complete disappearance of the tinnitus.
The defocusing of attention away from the tinnitus is also central to this phase. Although not only the tinnitus is treated, but also various secondary symptoms (insomnia, depression, tension headaches, psychogenic dizziness etc.) triggered off by the tinnitus and contributing to its aggravation.
It is important to know that the sufferers themselves posses various possibilities to influence the tinnitus and therefore be able to free themselves from the helplessness of being at its mercy.

• Not every case of chronic tinnitus needs treatment.
• Approx. 90% of patients suffering from tinnitus can live well with it and have a compensated tinnitus which does not need treatment.
• 10% of sufferers though, must be assumed to have a decompensated tinnitus which should be treated.

Hyperacusis

Hyperacusis is seen as a disorder which often goes together with tinnitus. By it we understand an increased sensitivity to sound independent of hearing ability. A phenomenon giving the sufferer the impression that he can hear much better, by which noises and even music at quite normal volumes are experienced as very stressful. In extreme cases even the humming of an air-conditioner, as well as the person's own voice are experienced as a torment.
With hyperacusis we are dealing with a temporary phenomenon which is highly treatable with noise desensitisation through psychoacoustic stimuli (MW-Training).

Phonophobia

Phonophobia, contrary to hyperacusis, does not consist of a general disorder in the sensitivity to sound, but is related much more to single incidents involving sound. Like, for example, the fear of flying, we are dealing here more with a psychological problem with definite connections to specific negative experiences. So people who, for example, as a result of a visit to a concert develop tinnitus, can develop fears and an aversion to going to concerts and avoid them in the future. In these cases an approach along behavioural therapy lines is meaningful, with the aim not to avoid the situations, but to gradually get accustomed to them in order to counteract the fears.