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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Background: There are a large number of assessment tools for tinnitus, with little consensus on what it is
important to measure and no preference for a minimum reporting standard. The item content of tinnitus
assessment tools should seek to capture relevant impacts of tinnitus on everyday life, but no-one has yet
synthesised information about the range of tinnitus complaints. This review is thus the first comprehensive and
authoritative collection and synthesis of what adults with tinnitus and their significant others report as problems in
their everyday lives caused by tinnitus.
Methods: Electronic searches were conducted in PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, as well as grey literature sources to
identify publications from January 1980 to June 2015 in which participants were enrolled because tinnitus was their
primary complaint. A manual search of seven relevant journals updated the search to December 2017. Of the 3699
titles identified overall, 84 records (reporting 86 studies) met our inclusion criteria and were taken through to data
collection. Coders collated generic and tinnitus-specific complaints reported by people with tinnitus. All relevant
data items were then analyzed using an iterative approach to narrative synthesis to form domain groupings
representing complaints of tinnitus, which were compared patients and significant others.
Results: From the 86 studies analyzed using data collected from 16,381 patients, 42 discrete complaints were
identified spanning physical and psychological health, quality of life and negative attributes of the tinnitus sound.
This diversity was not captured by any individual study alone. There was good convergence between complaints
collected using open- and closed-format questions, with the exception of general moods and perceptual attributes
of tinnitus (location, loudness, pitch and unpleasantness); reported only using closed questions. Just two studies
addressed data from the perspective of significant others (n = 79), but there was substantial correspondence with
the patient framework, especially regarding relationships and social life.
Conclusions: Our findings contribute fundamental new knowledge and a unique resource that enables
investigators to appreciate the broad impacts of tinnitus on an individual. Our findings can also be used to guide
questions during diagnostic assessment, to evaluate existing tinnitus-specific HR-QoL questionnaires and develop
new ones, where necessary.
Description
Keywords
Symptoms Adults Otology Audiology People important outcomes
Citation
Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, 16(1), 1-15. Doi: 10.1186/s12955-018-0888-9
Publisher
BioMed Central