Standardized Clinical Profiling in Spanish Patients with Chronic Tinnitus
Metadatos
Mostrar el registro completo del ítemEditorial
MDPI
Materia
Tinnitus K-clustering Machine learning ESIT screening questionnaire
Fecha
2022-02-13Referencia bibliográfica
Haro-Hernandez, E... [et al.]. Standardized Clinical Profiling in Spanish Patients with Chronic Tinnitus. J. Clin. Med. 2022, 11, 978. [https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm11040978]
Patrocinador
H2020 Research and Innovation Program, Grant Agreement Number 848261 (UNITI); Andalusian Health Government (Grant PI-0027-2020); Andalusian Health Government (Grant RH-0150-2020)Resumen
Background: Tinnitus is a heterogeneous condition. The aim of this study as to compare the
online and hospital responses to the Spanish version of European School for Interdisciplinary Tinnitus
Research screening-questionnaire (ESIT-SQ) in tinnitus individuals by an unsupervised age clustering.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed including 434 white Spanish patients with chronic
tinnitus to assess the demographic and clinical profile through the ESIT-SQ, with 204 outpatients
and 230 individuals from an online survey; a K-means clustering algorithm was used to classify
both responses according to age. Results: Online survey showed a high proportion of Meniere’s
disease (MD) patients compared to both the general population and the outpatient cohort. The
responses showed statistically significant differences between groups regarding education level,
tinnitus-related hearing disorders (MD, hyperacusis), sleep difficulties, dyslipidemia, and other
tinnitus characteristics, including duration, type of onset, the report of mitigating factors and the
use of treatments. However, these differences were partially confirmed after adjusting for age.
Conclusions: Self-reported tinnitus surveys are a low confidence source for tinnitus phenotyping.
Additional clinical evaluation is needed for tinnitus research to reach the diagnosis. Age-based cluster
analysis might help to better define clinical profiles and to compare responses in ESIT-SQ among
subgroups of patients with tinnitus.