Tinnitus is the experience of hearing ringing or other noises in one or both of your ears in the absence of an external sound. It affects between 15% to 20% of people, and is especially common in older adults.
It is usually caused by an underlying condition, such as age-related hearing loss or an ear injury.
And while there is no cure, symptoms can be relieved by using techniques such as Tinnitus retraining therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy.
Cathy Orintiene, deaf and hard of hearing support adviser from local charity Guernsey Hard of Hearing, said it wanted to use National Tinnitus Week to highlight the lack of local support.
‘A key local issue is that tinnitus rehabilitation support via the Medical Specialist Group audiology department has been unavailable for two years, leaving many islanders without specialist help and increasing the urgency to see this support reinstated,’ she said.
‘An audiologist should be available to sit down with patients and try and determine what type of tinnitus they have, teach about the mechanisms of it, and then go through their lifestyle and give people different tools to deal with it specifically with the clinical information.
'Unfortunately there’s been a lot of inconsistencies and difficulties within the audiology department over the last few years.’
As part of its contract with the States of Guernsey, MSG provides diagnostic and counselling services for patients with symptoms of tinnitus as part of its wider ear, nose and throat services. This requires patients to be referred to a specialist by their GP.
A spokeswoman for MSG said its primary focus was ensuring that patients received high-quality care in line with clinical guidelines.
‘In some cases there are treatment options that are not currently within the scope of the contract and are therefore not funded by HSC, so patients may need to self-fund or use their insurance cover,’ she said.
She added that the audiology team had recently expanded following the appointment of Amy Vermeulen, who joined as a full-time audiologist in January.
‘This increase in staffing is a key step in strengthening the clinical support services required under our contract with the States,’ she said.
‘With the recent recruitment, we are actively reviewing our service capacity. The goal of the audiology service is to ensure that patients requiring specialist diagnosis, help and advice, receive that in a timely manner.’
You need to be logged in to comment. If you had an account on our previous site, you can migrate your old account and comment profile to this site by visiting this page and entering the email address for your old account. We'll then send you an email with a link to follow to complete the process.