Role of the Department of Defense Hearing Center of Excellence in Studying the Treatment of Tinnitus

Against poor odds, Formby and colleagues managed to receive federal grant funding for a multisite clinical trial, to access and convince military investigators to join in this trial, to select rigorous measures and methods when no objective tinnitus measurement exists, and to gain approvals from all levels of regulatory and local command authority oversight bodies across 6 military treatment facilities before they could start their effort to complete the Tinnitus Retraining Therapy Trial (TRTT), described by Scherer and Formby in this issue ofJAMA Otolaryngology –Head& Neck Surgery. In just shy of 20 years from the time planning and organization for the study began, they completed data collection from 130 individuals. With a paucity of trials to evaluate this tinnitus management strategy, the contribution of Scherer and Formby to the literature is a success story in perseverance. The logistics, study inclusion criteria, and training of the clinical staff in TRTT were tasks that appeared at first to be insurmountable, but ultimately were successful.
Source: JAMA Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery - Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research