Capturing vertigo in the emergency room: three tools to double the rate of diagnosis

Many patients attending the emergency room (ER) with vertigo, leave without a diagnosis. We assessed whether the three tools could improve ER diagnosis of vertigo.

A prospective observational study was undertaken on 539 patients presenting to ER with vertigo. We used three tools: a structured-history and examination, nystagmus video-oculography (VOG) in all patients, additional video head-impulse testing (vHIT) for acute-vestibular-syndrome (AVS).

In the intervention-group (n = 424), case-history classified AVS in 34.9%, episodic spontaneous-vertigo (ESV 32.1%), and episodic positional-vertigo (EPV 22.6%). In AVS, we employed "Quantitative-HINTS plus" (Head-Impulse, Nystagmus and Test-of-Skew quantified by vHIT and VOG, audiometry) to identify vestibular-neuritis (VN) and stroke (41.2 and 31.1%). vHIT gain ≤ 0.72, catch-up saccade amplitude > 1.4^○, saccade-frequency > 154%, and unidirectional horizontal-nystagmus, separated stroke from VN with 93.1% sensitivity and 88.5% specificity. In ESV, 66.2 and 14% were diagnosed with vestibular migraine and Meniere's Disease by using history and audiometry. Horizontal-nystagmus velocity was lower in migraine 0.4 ± 1.6^○/s than Meniere's 5.7 ± 5.5^○/s (p < 0.01). In EPV, benign positional vertigo (BPV) was identified in 82.3% using VOG. Paroxysmal positional-nystagmus lasting < 60 s separated BPV from non-BPV with 90% sensitivity and 100% specificity. In the control group of ER patients undergoing management-as-usual (n = 115), diagnoses included BPV (38.3%) and non-specific vertigo (41.7%). Unblinded assessors reached a final diagnosis in 90.6 and 30.4% of the intervention and control groups. Blinded assessors provided with the data gathered from each group reached a diagnosis in 86.3 and 41.1%.

Three tools: a structured-assessment, vHIT and VOG doubled the rate of diagnosis in the ER.