[Chronic complex tinnitus: does day care unit-based short-term psychotherapy help?]

Results of empirical research on the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic treatment of chronic complex tinnitus are still unclear and require further studies for clarification.

The objective of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of multimodal treatment of patients with chronic complex tinnitus in a day care unit setting.

In this prospective study, the effectiveness of an intense 5-day multimodal treatment delivered to 93 patients was assessed using a pre-post design. Tinnitus-specific effects were captured by the Mini-TQ-12 measurement instrument and psychiatric comorbidity assessed using the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI). In statistical analyses, t-tests, χ(2) tests and Wilcoxon signed ranks tests were performed to determine statistical significance; effect sizes (ES) were calculated according to Cohen's d.

The pre-post difference in Mini-TQ-12 was highly significant in t-test (p < 0.001); the ES was small (ES = 0.45). In BSI, the pre-post difference in the Global Severity Index (GSI) as a global measure was also highly significant in t-test (p < 0.001); ES was small (ES = 0.40). Nonparametric tests (Wilcoxon test) confirmed these results.

This study demonstrates the statistically significant effectiveness of a multimodal therapeutic approach. Moreover, the results indicate that patients could benefit from more intensive therapeutic interventions.