Comparison of the video head impulse test with the caloric test in patients with sub-acute and chronic vestibular disorders

The aim of this prospective register-based study was to compare video Head Impulse Tests (vHIT) with caloric tests on 173 patients assessed by a tertiary Neurology referral centre who had been referred for investigation of dizziness or vertigo and whose symptom duration was one month or longer. Abnormal vHIT was defined as angular velocity gain (peak eye velocity/peak head velocity) less than 0.79 at 80 ms and 0.75 at 60 ms, which was two standard deviations below our institutions' lower limit of normal; together with refixation saccades. Abnormal bi-thermal caloric testing defined unilateral hypofunction as a 25% difference using Jongkee's formula and bilateral hypofunction was defined by the sum of the peak slow phase velocities over the four irrigations being <20°/s. Sixty patients had abnormal results on one or both tests, of whom 51 had unilateral and nine bilateral hypofunction. With caloric testing considered as the gold standard, the sensitivity (95% CI) of the vHIT was 18/52, 34.6% (22.0-49.1), and the specificity (95% CI) was 113/121, 93.4% (87.4-97.1). However vHIT was more sensitive in the nine patients with bilateral hypofunction with 100% abnormal vHIT results while only 4/9, 44% had abnormal caloric results. In conclusion these results support the continued use of both vHIT and caloric tests in patients with sub-acute and chronic vestibular symptoms, especially if the vHIT is normal.