The Dizziness Handicap Inventory and Its Relationship with Vestibular Diseases

Abstract

Objective: The degree of dizziness differs in peripheral vestibular diseases such as benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, Meniere's disease, and vestibular neuritis depending on the diseases. However, to date, there has been a limited amount of research conducted on the differences in subjective symptoms, handicap in daily life, and depressiveness of patients with each of these disorders, which cannot be measured by a vestibular function test. In this study, functional, emotional, and physical disorders were compared and analyzed prospectively using the Korean form Dizziness Handicap Inventory (K-DHI) with high reliability and validity. Materials and Methods: The questionnaires were administered to the 150 patients diagnosed as Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertig (BPPV), definite Meniere's disease, and vestibular neuritis at the time of diagnosis and at the end of the treatment, such as vestibular rehabilitation or canalith repositioning procedure(CRP), and the patients with Meniere's disease underwent K-DHI during the follow-up period after the treatment. Comparative analyses have been carried out on each disease in terms of pre and post treatment and subcategories using the data from the questionnaire. Results: The K-DHI scores were significantly higher in patients with definite Meniere's disease than patients with BPPV or vestibular neuritis and as for the subcategories of patients with BPPV, patients with lateral canal BPPV showed significantly higher scores. Female patients with definite Meniere's disease or vestibular neuritis that manifests a longer symptomatic period had higher scores than male patients. Conclision: The degree of handicap due to dizziness was more severe in terms of functional, emotional, and physical limitations in patients with lateral canal BPPV and female patients. Therefore, more elaborated emotional stability and consultation are considered to be crucial.