Photo credit: Dr. Craig Hacking and Prof Frank Gaillard licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
This report from the University of California San Francisco discusses a Phase 1 trial of deep brain stimulation for tinnitus. A Phase 1 trial is a preliminary trial to see how a new treatment works. Then there are Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials.
Most treatments do not pass all the hurdles to be approved for regular use. And deep brain stimulation is expensive and risky.
By comparison, prevention of most forms of tinnitus is cheap, easy, and safe: avoid head trauma and noise exposure and one is unlikely to develop tinnitus.
That sounds like a much better idea than deep brain stimulation to me.
