Abstract

Tinnitus, the phantom perception of sound, is a frequent disorder that causes significant morbidity and treatment is elusive. A large variety of different treatment options have been proposed and from most of them some patients benefit. However, a particular treatment that helps one patient may fail for others. This suggests that there are different forms of tinnitus which differ in their pathophysiology and their response to specific treatments. Therefore, it is a major challenge for tinnitus treatment to identify the most promising therapy for a specific patient.However, most published clinical treatment studies have enrolled only relatively small patient samples, making it difficult to identify predictors of treatment response for specific approaches. Furthermore, inter-study comparability is limited because of varying methods of tinnitus assessment and different outcome parameters. Performing clinical trials according to standardized methodology and pooling the data in a database should facilitate both clinical subtypisation of different forms of tinnitus, and identification of promising treatments for different types of tinnitus. This would be an important step towards the goal of individualized treatment of tinnitus.For these reasons, an international database of tinnitus patients, who undergo specific treatments, and are assessed during the course of this treatment with standardized instruments (e.g., psychoacoustic measures, questionnaires) has been established. The primary objectives of this database are (1) collecting a standardized set of data on patient characteristics, treatments, and outcomes from tinnitus patients consulting specialized tinnitus clinics all over the world (at present 13 centers in 8 countries), (2) delineating different subtypes of tinnitus based on data that has been systematically collected and (3) identifying predictors for individual treatment response based on the clinical profile. Starting in 2008, the database currently contains data from more than 400 patients. It is expected that more centers will join the project and that the patient numbers will rapidly grow, so that this international database will further facilitate future research and contribute to the development of evidence based on individualized treatment.

Highlights

  • Chronic tinnitus is a frequent disorder characterized by high morbidity and a significant reduction in the quality of a patient’s life [1,2]

  • Data entered in the database ranges from highly selected patient populations participating in controlled trials to unselected patients populations receiving standard treatments under real world conditions

  • Participation in the database project is open to anyone who is willing to follow the guidelines of data collection

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Summary

Background

Chronic tinnitus is a frequent disorder characterized by high morbidity and a significant reduction in the quality of a patient’s life [1,2]. The first attempt at systematically collecting data from tinnitus patients is the web-based Oregon Tinnitus Data Archive [20]http://www.tinnitusarchive.org/ This free, accessible database contains statistical data summaries of current status and past history of tinnitus, results of specific tinnitus tests, audiologic status and demographic and general information in a sample of 1630 tinnitus patients who attended the tinnitus clinic of the Oregon Hearing Research Center between 1981 and 1994. This database allows a description of basic tinnitus characteristics in a large patient sample. A new international database, including patients from many centers in many countries, containing cross-sectional as well as longitudinal data from intervention studies would largely facilitate future tinnitus research.

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