Retrospective Study to Describe Clinical Characteristics of Patients with Balance Disorders

Objective: To describe the clinical characteristics of patients with balance disorders at Otolaryngology unit. Subjects and methods: A retrospective study was conducted including patients between 4 to 96 years who consulted for balance disorders in the last three years. A univariate analysis and Two way- ANOVA tests were performed for statistical analysis. Results: 2620 patients were assessed with a mean of 54.6 ± 9 years, female were the most affected (64.5%). As main non -neurotological comorbidities Depression, Otosclerosis, Fibromyalgia and Cardiac Arrhythmias were found. Vestibular Migraine (VM), Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV) and Vestibular neuritis (VN) were described as main neurotological comorbidities. BPPV percentage of presentation compared to VM showed a significant statistical difference. Moreover, similar findings were observed between BPPV and VN. The most frequent diagnosis done were VM (25%), Meniere’s Disease (21.6%), BPPV (16.2%), Multisensory Dizziness (6%) and VN (4%). VM presentation was inversely proportional to age in men and women, meanwhile BPPV showed it as directly proportional. Meniere’s Disease showed a similar distribution on age presentation. Conclusions: We found similar results as European and American series, being female sex the most affected. However, in this population we found Multisensory dizziness as non-frequent diagnosis reported in other series.