Methodological considerations in treatment evaluations of tinnitus distress: A call for guidelines

Integrative approach for tinnitus: potential for qigong

“…Since tinnitus is a purely subjective disorder, the evaluation of treatment interventions is challenging. 1,2 Hence, we agree with the abovementioned methodological limitations of our pilot study. In the evaluation of a non-pharmacologic intervention like qigong, one has to deal with further methodological difficulties, such as the adequacy of the control group or randomisation of a motivated patient to the control group.…”

“…Tinnitus is a prevalent disorder that is difficult to treat, and as such is in urgent need of more efficient treatment options. Since tinnitus is a purely subjective disorder, the evaluation of treatment interventions is challenging 1,2 . Hence, we agree with the above‐mentioned methodological limitations of our pilot study.…”

“…Accordingly, it has been suggested that there will probably never be one single therapy that is suitable for all patients with tinnitus, but rather different therapies for different forms of tinnitus 4 . This implies that the analysis of clinical trials should focus not only on the whole group, but also on the group of treatment responders 1,5,6 . However, up to now, only a few subtypes have been identified that respond to specific therapeutic interventions.…”

“…4 This implies that the analysis of clinical trials should focus not only on the whole group, but also on the group of treatment responders. 1,5,6 However, up to now, only a few subtypes have been identified that respond to specific therapeutic interventions.…”

Methodological aspects of clinical trials in tinnitus: A proposal for an international standard

“…Many of the clinical trials in tinnitus have critical methodological limitations including: inappropriate outcome measures and statistical methods, insufficient sample sizes, poorly defined interventions, problems with study blinding and randomization and insufficient reporting of study details [33-35]. The heterogeneous quality of tinnitus treatment studies is echoed by all Cochrane Reviews regarding tinnitus treatment studies [20, 23, 36-39] and has led to efforts to describe basic methodological recommendations for the designs of clinical tinnitus trials [40].…”