Intersession Variations in Frequency Tuning of Ocular Vestibular Evoked Myogenic Potentials in Healthy Individuals

Objective Frequency tuning of ocular vestibular evoked myogenic potential (oVEMP), which is the stimulus frequency corresponding to the largest oVEMP amplitude, has been used to diagnose cases with Ménière's disease and differentiate them from cases with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo with a high degree of sensitivity and specificity. However, this measure of oVEMP is carved out of the peak-to-peak amplitude of oVEMP, and studies on test-retest reliability of amplitude of oVEMP have shown moderate-to-excellent reliability of amplitude. This would theoretically render the frequency tuning of oVEMP susceptible to variations across multiple recordings. This being the case, erroneous conclusions regarding the presence of Ménière's disease could be made if the frequency tuning varies between recordings. However, there is no published report regarding the test-retest reliability of frequency tuning measure of oVEMP even in healthy individuals, to the best of our knowledge. Therefore, this study aimed to study the test-retest reliability of frequency tuning of oVEMP in healthy individuals. Method The study included 20 healthy adults in the age range of 18-25 years. All participants underwent oVEMP recording in 4 different sessions, with each session consisting of oVEMP recording for octave and midoctave tone-burst frequencies from 250 to 2000 Hz. Results The results revealed no significant difference in frequency tuning of oVEMP among the sessions (p > .05). The intraclass correlation coefficient for frequency tuning data was found to be .857. Conclusion The frequency tuning of oVEMP has excellent test-retest reliability and therefore lends itself to applications requiring multiple sessions of recording.