A  POSTAL SURVEY OF TINNITUS MANAGEMENT  IN GENERAL PRACTICE- RESULTS OF A PILOT STUDY

Sriskandarajah V, Jayarajan V.

Dept of Audiological Medicine, Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford, UK.

The UK Department of Health published in January 2009 a document regarding provision of services for adults with tinnitus. This prompted us to carry out a survey of tinnitus management in General Practice. We designed a postal survey in two parts: a)a pilot study b)a national survey.

For the pilot study twenty GPs were selected at random across the UK. The purpose of the project was to evaluate current tinnitus management methods, and also to modify the questionnaire for the national survey, based on the responses of the GPs.

There were six responses, of which only four were complete. Three of the four said they had little knowledge of tinnitus, but all four felt they had some awareness of treatment measures. All the respondents stated that they would take a history and carry out an ENT examination.

There appeared to be a good understanding of tinnitus services such as the British Tinnitus Association (BTA) and Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID) as well as the use of behavioural techniques in the treatment of tinnitus. All the respondents indicated that they would like an improvement in the current provision of services for tinnitus patients.

We found this feedback quite valuable. The questionnaire for the national survey was modified based on the responses of the pilot survey, and was distributed to 400 (20%) randomly selected GPs in the UK.

E-mail: vasuky@fsmail.net