TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schlee, Winfried
A1  - Neff, Patrick
A1  - Simoes, Jorge
A1  - Langguth, Berthold
A1  - Schoisswohl, Stefan
A1  - Steinberger, Heidi
A1  - Norman, Marie
A1  - Spiliopoulou, Myra
A1  - Schobel, Johannes
A1  - Hannemann, Ronny
A1  - Pryss, Rüdiger
T1  - Smartphone-guided educational counseling and self-help for chronic tinnitus
JF  - Journal of Clinical Medicine
N2  - Tinnitus is an auditory phantom perception in the ears or head in the absence of a corresponding external stimulus. There is currently no effective treatment available that reliably reduces tinnitus. Educational counseling is a treatment approach that aims to educate patients and inform them about possible coping strategies. For this feasibility study, we implemented educational material and self-help advice in a smartphone app. Participants used the educational smartphone app unsupervised during their daily routine over a period of four months. Comparing the tinnitus outcome measures before and after smartphone-guided treatment, we measured changes in tinnitus-related distress, but not in tinnitus loudness. Improvements on the Tinnitus Severity numeric rating scale reached an effect size of 0.408, while the improvements on the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) were much smaller with an effect size of 0.168. An analysis of user behavior showed that frequent and intensive use of the app is a crucial factor for treatment success: participants that used the app more often and interacted with the app intensively reported a stronger improvement in the tinnitus. Between study allocation and final assessment, 26 of 52 participants dropped out of the study. Reasons for the dropouts and lessons for future studies are discussed in this paper.
KW  - tinnitus
KW  - self-help
KW  - ecological momentary assessment
KW  - ehealth
KW  - smart-phone
KW  - intervention
Y1  - 2022
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-267295
SN  - 2077-0383
VL  - 11
IS  - 7
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schlee, Winfried
A1  - Simoes, Jorge
A1  - Pryss, Rüdiger
T1  - Auricular acupressure combined with self-help intervention for treating chronic tinnitus: a longitudinal observational study
JF  - Journal of Clinical Medicine
N2  - Tinnitus is a phantom sound perception in the ears or head and can arise from many different medical disorders. Currently, there is no standard treatment for tinnitus that reliably reduces tinnitus. Individual patients reported that acupressure at various points around the ear can help to reduce tinnitus, which was investigated here. With this longitudinal observational study, we report a systematic evaluation of auricular acupressure on 39 tinnitus sufferers, combined with a self-help smartphone app. The participants were asked to report on tinnitus, stress, mood, neck, and jaw muscle tensions twice a day using an ecological momentary assessment study design for six weeks. On average, 123.6 questionnaires per person were provided and used for statistical analysis. The treatment responses of the participants were heterogeneous. On average, we observed significant negative trends for tinnitus loudness (Cohen's d effect size: −0.861), tinnitus distress (d = −0.478), stress (d = −0.675), and tensions in the neck muscles (d = −0.356). Comparison with a matched control group revealed significant improvements for tinnitus loudness (p = 0.027) and self-reported stress level (p = 0.003). The positive results of the observational study motivate further research including a randomized clinical trial and long-term assessment of the clinical improvement.
KW  - tinnitus
KW  - acupressure
KW  - self-help
KW  - ecological momentary assessment
KW  - stress
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-246209
SN  - 2077-0383
VL  - 10
IS  - 18
ER  -