Consensus for tinnitus patient assessment and treatment outcome measurement: Tinnitus Research Initiative meeting, Regensburg, July 2006
Introduction
Chronic tinnitus, the phantom perception of sound, can be a debilitating and life-altering experience. It affects millions of people in western countries. Despite the enormous social and economic burden tinnitus causes, no well-established specific treatment for this disorder is available. Among the reasons for this unsatisfactory situation are the difficulties in assessing tinnitus as it is a purely self-report subjective phenomenon.
There is widespread recognition that consistency between research centres in the ways that patients with tinnitus are assessed and outcomes following interventions are measured would facilitate more effective co-operation and more meaningful evaluations and comparisons of outcomes. On the other hand most research centres already have long established systems for collecting and assessing data and hence are unable or unwilling to completely change to a different system because so much would be lost.
At the recent (July, 2006) Tinnitus Research Initiative meeting in Regensburg, Germany an attempt was made through workshops to gain a consensus both for patient assessments and for outcome measurements.
It is hoped that this consensus will facilitate cooperation between tinnitus research centres in finding and evaluating treatments for tinnitus and will help achieve more meaningful comparisons between studies.
Section snippets
There is a need for consensus on assessment and outcome measurement
There is an urgent need for a set of assessment methods to be agreed and utilised by the international tinnitus research community. This includes assessment of patients with tinnitus and subsequent measurement of outcomes following intervention.
Consistency in assessment of patients with tinnitus will advance the characterisation of their tinnitus into subtypes. As results for most known therapeutic interventions are very inconsistent, the identification of predictors for the effectiveness of
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Ulli Soltani for organisational assistance.
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