Tinnitus outcomes assessment

Over the past two decades, recognition has grown that measures for evaluating treatment outcomes must be designed specifically to have high responsiveness. With that in mind, four major types of tinnitus measures are reviewed, including psychoacoustic measures, self-report questionnaires concerning functional effects of tinnitus, various rating scales, and global outcome measures. Nine commonly used tinnitus questionnaires, developed in the period 1980-2000, are reviewed. Because of many similarities between tinnitus and pain, comparisons between pain and tinnitus measures are discussed, and recommendations that have been made for developing a core set of measures to evaluate treatment-related changes in pain are presented as providing a fruitful path for developing a core set of measures for tinnitus. Finally, the importance of having both immediately obtainable outcome measures (psychoacoustic, rating scales, or single global measures) and longer term measures (questionnaires covering the negative effects of tinnitus) is emphasized for further work in tinnitus outcomes assessment.