Tinnitus Clinical Trials

When assessing the effectiveness of a therapy for tinnitus, it is important to understand how treatments are clinically measured. In addition, understanding clinical trials will allow you to critique promotional statistics of tinnitus reduction that are often used to support a new tinnitus therapy.

The clinical trial is the standard tool of medical research when determining the therapeutic value of experimental treatments. Historically, as an area of scientific research, tinnitus has received comparatively little attention.

The most robust clinical trials are randomized and placebo controlled. This means that a group of patients are randomly selected to either receive treatment or a placebo control which is a sham version of the experimental therapy.

However, not all studies are conducted in this manner, and some do not even contain a placebo control group, which can mean that it is impossible to ascertain whether any improvements are due to the treatment or the placebo effect.

The placebo effect is the therapeutic effect gained from a patient’s belief and will that a particular treatment will change their condition. In a condition caused by multiple factors like tinnitus which has a strong psychological component alongside a physiological one, the placebo effect can be particularly strong.

The lack of standardized objective measures for tinnitus reduction also means it can be difficult to quantify the success of any treatment.

Normally, patients are asked to complete a graded questionnaire, which includes questions such as “On a scale of one to ten, how would say tinnitus affects your ability to sleep?” or “ Do you experience your tinnitus at all times or intermittently?” This is completed before and after treatment. Due to the largely subjective nature of tinnitus perception these questionnaires are currently the best method we have for measuring the efficacy of tinnitus therapy.

It is also important to consider the number of people who were involved in an investigation. It can be misleading when a scientific paper claims that 80% of its patients had success with a treatment when only 5 people participated in the trial.