Telehealth tinnitus therapy during the COVID-19 outbreak in the UK: uptake and related factors

Abstract

Objective

The Audiology Department at the Royal Surrey County Hospital usually offers face-to-face audiologist-delivered cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for tinnitus rehabilitation. During COVID-19 lockdown, patients were offered telehealth CBT via video using a web-based platform. This study evaluated the proportion of patients who took up the offer of telehealth sessions and factors related to this.

Design

Retrospective service evaluation.

Study sample

113 consecutive patients whose care was interrupted by the lockdown.

Results

80% of patients accepted telehealth. The main reasons for declining were not having access to a suitable device and the belief that telehealth appointments would not be useful. Compared to having no hearing loss in the better ear, having a mild or moderate hearing loss increased the chance of declining telehealth by factors of 3.5 (p = 0.04) and 14.9 (p = 0.038), respectively. High tinnitus annoyance as measured via the visual analogue scale increased the chance of declining telehealth appointments by a factor of 1.4 (p = 0.019).

Conclusions

Although CBT via telehealth was acceptable to most patients, alternatives may be necessary for the 20% who declined. These tended to have worse hearing in their better ear and more annoying tinnitus.

Keywords:

• Tinnitus
• audiology
• covid-19
• video
• telehealth

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the members of the THTSC at the Audiology Department, the RSCH for their help in data collection. The authors also thank two reviewers for helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).