Int. Adv. Otol. 2010; 6(2); 183-187

Result analysis of tinnitus handicap inventory in 60 patients with chronic tinnitus. 183-187
Xiangli Zeng, Jintian Cen, Zhicheng Ni, Peng Li, Shufang Wang, Gehua Zhang
Third Hospital Affiliated to Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China

Objective: To identify the purpose of patients with chronic tinnitus seeking for medical help repeatedly and their major emotional problems.

Materials and Methods: After mutual English/Chinese translation of the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) repeatedly, the final Chinese version was used for evaluation in 60 patients with chronic tinnitus (30 men and 30 women) and the following aspects were analyzed: 1) the score rank for 25 questions in the questionnaire; 2) score comparison among the catastrophic, emotional and functional questions.

Results: 1) Among the total, male and female groups, the question ranking the top was C19, which referred to “Do you feel that you have no control over your tinnitus?"; 2) Among the questions with the total scores among the top five in the total, male and female groups, the shared questions were "C19, C23, E16, namely, anxiety, confusion and aversion for tinnitus ".Among the questions scoring the last five, the shared questions were "F2, F9, E17", indicating that tinnitus had almost no impact on patients' hearing, social and family life; 3) The score rank on the three subscales of questions was catastrophic > emotional > functional subscales. The differences in the catastrophic and functional subscales of questions between the total group and the female group were statistically significant.

Conclusions: The functional impacts of chronic tinnitus on patients were far less than suffering from anxiety and aversion Anxiety, disappointment, aversion and other emotional disorders were the fundamental causes for patients with chronic tinnitus repeatedly seeking for medical help. In addition to tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT), there needs sufficient attention and effective management to emotional disorders in patients. As THI is a subjective self-test completed by patients and requires the patients to correctly understand the purpose of testing and each issue involved in THI, the education level of subjects may bring some restriction, which may lead to selection bias and need to be improved in future studies.