Advice in Therapy Speech Habituation Buzz in Sound Enrichment

Introduction: Tinnitus is a symptom that can worsen the quality of life, decreasing the concentration, sleep, emotional balance, and social life. The brain has the ability to discard and ignore unimportant signals, thus it is possible to eliminate the perception of tinnitus awareness, even if that neuronal activity is still present in the auditory pathways.

Objective: To investigate the effectiveness of counseling in speech therapy tinnitus habituation through sound enrichment, analyzing degree of discomfort in the areas of listening, concentration, emotion, and sleep.

Methods: A clinical trial. Data of 15 patients, of both sexes, whose complaint was unilateral or bilateral tinnitus, with presence or absence of hearing loss, who initiated treatment through the use of hearing aid (HA) with sound generator, was collected. At first, all subjects underwent audiological and otorhinolaryngology evaluation. The Activities of Iowa Tinnitus questionnaire, composed of 20 questions divided into functional scale nuisance, was applied. After the fitting of hearing aids, speech therapy counseling sessions in areas in which the individual had higher scores were performed and the questionnaire was reapplied.

Results: There was significant reduction in the degree of discomfort caused by tinnitus in all variables after the speech counseling: field concentration (p = 0.001), emotional (p = 0.001), sleep (p = 0.003), and session (p = 0.013). There were no significant differences associated with gender and location of tinnitus.

Conclusion: The concomitant speech sound therapy counseling was effective in reducing the discomfort caused by tinnitus in those variables.