Determinants of tinnitus’ impact in Quality of Life in an outpatient clinic protocol.

Background: Tinnitus is a chronic condition that can cause substantial handicap for certain patients and affects their Quality of Life. Our study focuses on Quality of Life for the tinnitus patients who participated in the protocol of an outpatient clinic established at the ENT department of the UMCG. First, we looked at the interventions done at the outpatient clinic (changes in Quality of Life, audiological and psycho-social recommendations given to the patients and the effects of the time interval between both assessments) and second, we investigated the contribution of personality (neuroticism and optimism) and coping (acceptance, illness control beliefs, temporal and social comparison) factors to Quality of Life. We based our research on the Self-Regulation Model of Leventhal that shows a process of adaptation to chronic illness. Method: We performed an uncontrolled prospective study, in which 260 consecutive patients were contacted and administered two assessments: self-report questionnaires were filled in at T1 during the first visit at the tinnitus outpatient clinic and at T2 when we contacted the patients for this follow-up study: 174 patients were included in our study. The time between T1 and T2 was 6 months to 2 years. We measured the tinnitus handicap perception (THI), anxiety and depression (HADS), Quality of Life: social functioning, mental health and general health (RAND-36), optimism (LOT), neuroticism (EPQ), illness control beliefs (PCHS), acceptance (ICQ), and temporal and social comparison (STCS).Results: We did not find any significant changes in Quality of Life between T1 and T2 except for a deterioration in social functioning with a mean difference of 4.8(21.5), (t=2.936, p