Quantitative Analysis of Psychiatric Disorders in Intractable Peripheral Vertiginous Patients: A Prospective Study

To investigate the correlation between psychological disorder and vestibular dysfunction in patients suffering from intractable peripheral vertigo.

Prospective study.

In-patients in a university hospital.

Prospective design of 26 intractable peripheral vertiginous patients with peripheral vestibular dysfunction and 20 controls recruited from the EENT hospital. Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale, Self-rating Anxiety scale, Self-rating Depression scale, Symptom Checklist-90 were used in this study. All vertigo patients received intratympanic gentamicin/dexamethasone administration or endolymphatic sac decompression. Pre- and posttreatment scores were collected and compared. All the results were statistically analyzed using Stata 8.0. t test or rank-sum test and paired-sample t test or rank-sum test were performed.

The outcomes of Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale, Self-rating Anxiety scale, Self-rating Depression scale, Symptom Checklist-90 were significantly greater in vertiginous group than that in normal controls (p < 0.05). The pretreatment scores of these four scales were greater than the posttreatment scores in vertiginous patients, especially in Class A and B groups (p < 0.05). The scores of more scales were demonstrated to be statistically different in patients with over 5 years of the disorder and among patient in stages 1 to 3 than in stage 4 (p < 0.05). No significant difference was noted between male and female participants in all the questionnaires used (p > 0.05).

Increased anxiety/depression levels were noted in peripheral vertiginous patients compared with normal controls through psychiatric questionnaires, and then a significant decrease after the effective treatment of vertigo, suggesting that vertigo attack may contribute to psychological dysfunction. The intervention seemed to be more effective in lowering anxiety/depression levels among patients in earlier stage of Ménière's disease marked by pure-tone audiometry results.