Balance performance and self-perceived handicap among dizzy patients in primary health care

To study the diagnostic panorama at a primary health care centre where the physiotherapist is specialized in dizziness. To study balance measures of dizzy patients as well as measures of self-perceived handicap and to analyse whether these measures correlate.

Retrospective study of computerized medical records.

A primary health care centre in Malmö, Sweden.

A total of 119 patients with dizziness, 73 women and 46 men, aged from 22 to 90 years.

Diagnoses according to specified criteria. Four balance measures: tandem standing, standing on one leg, walking in a figure of eight, and walking heel to toe on a line. The Dizziness Handicap Inventory (DHI).

Six different groups of diagnoses were found: multisensory dizziness, peripheral vestibular disorder, dizziness as a symptom caused by whiplash-associated disorder, unspecific dizziness, phobic postural vertigo, and dizziness of cervical origin. The group with multisensory dizziness performed poorer on the balance measures than the other groups. The group with phobic postural vertigo had the highest total scores on DHI, while the vestibular group had the lowest total score. Subjects over 65 years old had more disturbances in balance, but a lower level of self-perceived handicap, than subjects aged 65 or younger. DHI did not correlate with any of the balance measures.

Self-perceived handicap, measured with DHI, and disturbed balance measured with clinical methods, do not necessarily correlate. Elderly patients with dizziness seem to have more disturbances in balance than younger patients but a lower level of self-perceived handicap.