Hearing Aid, Tinnitus Relief

Officials from General Hearing Instruments Inc. (GHI) announce the release a new combination hearing aid/broadband sound generator to address the needs of tinnitus sufferers who also have clinically significant hearing loss. This device, the Tranquil Combination RIC, will complement the Louisiana-based hearing aid manufacturer’s line of devices for tinnitus sufferers with normal or relatively normal hearing to provide a package that will suit any need.

Tinnitus (ringing in the ears) is a condition affecting some 60 million Americans. Most of these individuals are unaware of their tinnitus throughout much of the day and require no particular treatment. For some 12 million, however, their tinnitus can be a daily struggle, affecting home, work, social activities, and overall joy of life. These sufferers have lost an entity so near and dear to them that they did not know how important it was until they lost it – they have lost their silence and are searching for tinnitus relief.

Up until the early 1990s the best the medical and audiological communities could offer tinnitus sufferers was reassurance and the possibility of masking, totally covering their own noxious head noise with yet another sound. It was at that point in time that Polish-born neurophysiologist, Dr. Pawel Jastreboff, introduced Tinnitus Retraining Therapy, the first in a series of habituation-based protocols that have gained increasingly wide acceptance within the tinnitus community over the past two decades. These protocols combine the use of educational counseling with very soft background sound to decrease one’s reaction to his or her tinnitus over time, regardless of how loud that tinnitus might be, so that it ceases to be a significant issue in their lives. GHI has been at the forefront of providing small wearable broadband sound generators for tinnitus relief from the beginning, but up until now, there has not been a widely affordable broadband sound generator for tinnitus sufferers who also need high-quality digital hearing aids. GHI’s Tranquil Combination RIC, available only through qualified hearing healthcare professionals, fills that need.

GHI has engaged Dr. Stephen Nagler, licensed medical doctor and former Chairman of the Board of the American Tinnitus Association, as its Director of Tinnitus and Hyperacusis Services. Dr. Nagler not only assists with the design of GHI’s tinnitus devices, he also develops educational programs for the professional community and enables GHI to be the primary resource for any hearing healthcare professional in the world faced with a challenging patient suffering from tinnitus or hyperacusis (sound sensitivity).