[Music therapy in chronic tonal tinnitus. Heidelberg model of evidence-based music therapy].

Tinnitus has a very high prevalence, with more than one million patients in the German population needing treatment for it. About 50% of them suffer from so-called tonal tinnitus, i.e., tinnitus with a well-defined frequency. Although tinnitus is one of the most common symptoms in ENT medicine, the existing treatments are polypragmatic and often lack a scientific foundation. Based on this fact, a novel music therapy concept was developed, evaluated, and scientifically substantiated (with psychological, audiological, and functional imaging procedures in the diagnosis and treatment). The advantages of the described therapy are the integration of known and well-proven acoustic and psychotherapeutic techniques. They were converted to specific music therapy interventions (resonance training, neuroauditive cortex reprogramming, and tinnitus desensitization). More than 190 patients suffering from chronic tonal tinnitus were effectively treated. The results indicate that the therapy is highly advantageous in terms of treatment duration, effectiveness, and follow-up stability compared with customary interventions. Furthermore, the results of brain imaging strongly suggest the usefulness of further investigation and discussion in the realm of neuronal tinnitus modeling.