Orientation Group on the applicability of tinnitus intervention

• Grant number: 15/11423-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): September 01, 2015
• Effective date (End): August 31, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Speech Therapy
• Principal Investigator: Maria Fernanda Capoani Garcia Mondelli
• Grantee: Anna Virghinia Borges Fook
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Odontologia de Bauru (FOB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Bauru , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Tinnitus causes discomfort that interferes with quality of life, making it difficult to understand speech and consequently causing a communicative and social prejudice in the various activities, and this occurs when this symptom reaches the auditory nervous system and conditions you to activate limbic system and the autonomic nervous system, resulting in emotional reactions and stress. Currently, there is no treatment that can eliminate tinnitus completely. However, strategies can be used in order to alleviate or minimize such symptom, such as the use of amplification, masking, biofeedback, electrical stimulation, drug therapy, surgery, counseling, psychotherapy and addiction therapy of tinnitus (Tinnitus Retraining Therapy - TRT). Objective: To determine the effectiveness of guidance group as an intervention to tinnitus. So as to assess the quality of life of subjects before and after treatment. Methods: The study will be developed at the Clinic of Speech, FOB-USP after the approval of the Research Ethics Committee CEP and the patient's consent to participate in research. They will be selected 10 patients with tinnitus and hearing thresholds considered normal. The study will be developed in two stages: an initial assessment (IA) and final evaluation (AF). The first assessment will be after the ENT service and conventional audiological diagnosis with referring patients to tinnitus intervention and the second, after 4 weeks of intervention sessions. At first, people fill the instruments Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) and the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) and will later be held session in the intervention group. The results will be tabulated and described according to the statistical analysis of quantitative and qualitative nominal and ordinal variables. Data analysis will be based on inductive or inferential statistics.