International Journal of Speech and Audiology

Dizziness is an unpleasant and debilitating symptom which affects daily activities and participation of individual with dizziness. Assessment of individual with dizziness includes, taking a detailed case history and administering some formal and informal test. The informal test is extensively used since many years at bedside and vestibular clinics such as; Fukuda test, Romberg test. However, VEMP is a recent advancement in assessment, which include both cVEMP and oVEMP. Despite the fact that clinician are using these test enormously, there is a dearth of literature available regarding the combined effect and its usefulness of Fukuda, Romberg and VEMP. Therefore, the current study was designed to investigate the usefulness of Fukuda and Romberg test in investing the person with vestibular dysfunction.

Need of the study: To check the accuracy of subjective and objective test for vestibular disorder.

Aim: To see the usefulness of Fukuda and Romberg test in evaluating vestibular pathology over cVEMP and oVEMP.

Methods: A comparative study was carried out. A total 40 participants ranging from 30 to 60 years were included in the study. Two groups were included, which were aging divided into two different group age range with 20 participants. Group I consisted of 20 participants with normal hearing sensitivity, without any symptom of vestibular disorder and no significant medical history. Group II consisted of 20 participants with a complaint of dizziness. Initial, a detailed audio vestibular evaluation was carried out having a detailed case history, pure tone audiometry to interpret the type and degree of hearing loss and Immittance evaluation along with reflexometery to rule out if any middle ear pathology and retro cochlear pathology respectively. Selected participants had undergone Fukuda test, Romberg test, Cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potentials and Ocular vestibular evoked myogenic potentials.

Results and Conclusion: Results of the present study affirmed that, there was significant deviation seen on the Fukuda test between the group I and group II as per the norms available. In the cVEMP, latency p13 & n23 and the amplitude was calculated and compared between Group I and group II. The results revealed that statistically no significance for latency and for amplitude there was statistically significance difference was observed. Similarly, in oVEMP latency n10, p16 and amplitude was calculated. It showed statistically difference for the latency but not for the amplitude. Moreover, in the Romberg test the positive sway and negative sway was calculated for the both the groups. The group I was revealed that the negative Romberg and for the group II it was positive Romberg. Which means if the sway was absent than it was considered as a normal Romberg or negative Romberg & if the sway was present than it was observed as an abnormal Romberg or positive Romberg.