Use of mindfulness in the treatment of tinnitus: consensus based on the opinion of Brazilian experts.
Mônica Claudino Medeiros Honorato, Mariana Lopes Martins, Lidiane Maria de Brito Macedo Ferreira and 2 others
Ten Brazilian tinnitus specialists agreed that mindfulness is a useful addition to tinnitus care but should not be the only treatment.
They recommend one 30-minute session weekly with daily home practice, alongside counseling or other therapies.
Key findings
1Experts reached consensus that mindfulness is a suitable therapeutic resource for tinnitus, but they also agreed it should not be used as the sole treatment.
2The recommended structure is one session per week lasting at least 30 minutes, with daily home practice and one exercise per session.
3No consensus was reached on the minimum number of sessions needed for tinnitus remission; this was the only topic on which the experts did not agree.
Still to come
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
This is the structured opinion of 10 Brazilian specialists, not evidence from patient outcomes. No patients were treated or measured in this study. The sample was a convenience selection of 23 specialists, and only 10 completed the final consensus stage, limiting the breadth of clinical experience represented. Only closed Likert-scale questions were used, which the authors acknowledge limited the depth of discussion. A third Delphi round to revisit items that did not reach consensus was not possible due to participant fatigue, so the non-consensus items remain unresolved. The 30-minute session length and one-exercise-per-session structure reflect what these particular experts do, not a tested protocol; published RCTs they cite used sessions of 120 to 150 minutes. All experts are Brazilian, and the consensus may not transfer to other health-system contexts or patient populations.
Declared interests
No funding source and no conflicts of interest were declared by the authors.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that a 30-minute weekly mindfulness protocol reduces tinnitus distress. It is the self-reported practice structure of 10 Brazilian specialists, not a tested intervention. The published trials the authors cite used sessions of 120 to 150 minutes over 8 weeks, and the consensus here is about how these particular clinicians organise their sessions, not about what has been shown to work in a controlled study.
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