A Systematic Review of Psychometric Validation for Subjective Tinnitus Outcome Measures Assessing Acute Treatment Effects

Otology & Neurotology Open

Telischi, J., Rossborough, J., et al. (2025).

Otology & Neurotology Open, 5(1), e067.

<div>This systematic review investigates the psychometric properties of subjective tinnitus outcome measurement tools for assessing acute treatment effects in individuals with tinnitus.</div>

U-LINK 21-1728; National Institutes of Health

From database inception to May 2022

<div>Peer-reviewed, published studies. Excludes nonrandomized studies (e.g., case reviews, letters, book chapters).</div>

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<div>Both the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) and the Tinnitus Functional Index (TFI) showed validity and reliability for measuring baseline tinnitus symptoms in individuals; however, their applicability for other scenarios lacked validation. Studies reported minimum clinically important differences (MCID) in patients after tinnitus treatment. The authors identified the following inconsistent MCID findings:</div> <div> <ul> <li><strong>THI:</strong> MCID of a 20-point change at a 20 day subacute interval (1 study), and MCID of 10-point change at a 16 day interval (1 study).</li> <li><strong>TFI:&nbsp;</strong>MCID ranging from 4.8- to 22.4-point changes at two week intervals (2 studies). MCID of 13-point change at 3- and 6-months (1 study), and MCID of 3.5-point change measured sometime between 3-35 days after treatment (1 study).</li> </ul> </div> <div>Limitations of this review include the potential exclusion of relevant non-English articles and the lack of consistency across studies (e.g., data collection intervals, intervention types). Additional research with larger samples is needed to investigate the validity of tools to measure clinically significant symptom changes for individuals at different time points of tinnitus care.</div>