TFI (Tinnitus Functional Index) is a scientifically validated questionnaire designed to assess how tinnitus affects different areas of a person's life. Unlike many other assessment tools, TFI was specifically developed to track changes over time - making it ideal for monitoring treatment progress.
How Is the TFI Assessment Conducted?
TFI is a list of questions grouped into eight topics. These topics correspond to eight subscales:
- Intrusiveness
- Sense of control
- Cognition
- Sleep
- Auditory
- Relaxation
- Quality of life
- Emotional distress
During the questionnaire, a person rates on a scale from 0 to 10 how much each problem raised in the question affects their life. From these ratings, an overall score is calculated both for each topic and as a total for the entire questionnaire. Taking the questionnaire is quite simple and usually takes 10-15 minutes.
How Do TFI Results Help Doctors and Patients?
After completing the questionnaire, the doctor and patient have a shared, clear picture of the condition. It becomes visible how exactly tinnitus affects the person's life and which specific areas suffer the most. This helps choose more appropriate and precise treatment, as well as make the approach targeted. Instead of general recommendations like "exercise," "go swimming," or the favorite "try not to pay attention to the noise," a tinnitus specialist can work specifically with the areas that need the most attention right now: sleep, anxiety, concentration, social activity, and so on.
Moreover, TFI allows for evaluating the results of therapy. This is serious support for both patient and therapist. Everything you do ultimately reflects in the score dynamics. If during repeat assessments the TFI scores characterizing tinnitus severity decrease, it means the chosen treatment and strategy are actually helping, and it makes sense to continue them. If scores don't decrease or rise, that's a signal to reconsider the approach and try other methods of working with tinnitus.
Why Did We at Sonaura Choose TFI?
At Sonaura, we set ourselves the task of helping people cope with tinnitus and achieve significant improvement in quality of life. In our opinion, TFI is one of the most developed and validated questionnaires for assessing the impact of tinnitus on quality of life. It is well known, thoroughly studied, and highly rated in scientific literature. Moreover, it is so well structured by life areas that it's also excellent for self-guided work by app users. That's why we decided to rely on it when building our recommendation system. TFI helps app users choose suitable types of therapy while also serving as a tool for assessing changes in condition through periodic repeat assessments.