Vestibular Recruitment in Meniere's Disease

Abstract

The aim of this study was to search for vestibular recruitment in a sample of patients with Meniere's disease. Recruitment was defined as an abnormal growth of response with increasing stimulus intensity. Twenty-nine patients were tested with sinusoidal rotation of three different magnitudes at four different frequencies. We also searched for auditory recruitment in each patient via tests of auditory brain stem responses, acoustic reflexes, and loudness balance and discomfort level. Analysis of vestibular responses indicated, on average, a linear relationship between stimulus magnitude and response magnitude, ie, doubling the stimulus magnitude resulted in twice the response magnitude. Meniere's patients did not yield results significantly different (although they were more variable) from those of the normal subjects. The vestibular responses of patients with auditory recruitment did not differ systematically from those of patients without auditory recruitment. We conclude that vestibular recruitment, if it exists in patients with Meniere's disease, is not demonstrated by sinusoidal rotational testing.