Ten-year incidence, predictors and impact of dizziness and vertigo in community-dwelling adults

Objectives: We used a cohort of community-dwelling adults to establish the 10-year incidence and predictors of dizziness/vertigo, and its impacts on health-related quality of life.Study design: Of the 1152 participants aged 55 + years who did not have dizziness/vertigo at baseline, 799 and 377 participants were followed up after 5 and 10 years, respectively, and had complete data and so were included in the incidence analysis. Hearing loss was determined as the pure-tone average of audiometric hearing thresholds at 500, 1000, 2000 and 4000 Hz, and any hearing loss was defined as >25 dB hearing level. Tinnitus and migraine were assessed by a positive response to a single question.Main outcome measures: Audiologists screened participants for reported dizziness using a single question. Quality of life was measured using the Short Form 36-item Health Survey (SF-36). Results: The cumulative 10-year incidence of dizziness/vertigo, vestibular vertigo and non-vestibular vertigo were 39.8 %, 27.1 %, and 11.9 %, respectively. Age and presence of migraine were significant predictors of incident dizziness/vertigo: multivariable-adjusted hazard ratio (HR) 1.03 (95 % confidence interval, CI, 1.01-1.06) and HR 1.63 (95 % CI 1.13-2.35), respectively. A significant decrease in scores for the following SF 36 domains was observed over the 10 years among participants reporting baseline dizziness/vertigo: physical functioning (P-trend < 0.0001), role limitation due to physical problems (P-trend < 0.0001), general health (P trend = 0.01), and vitality (P-trend = 0.01).Conclusions: Dizziness/vertigo was a frequent and detrimental symptom in this population of community dwelling adults. Our study highlights the burden imposed by dizziness, as evidenced by a significant prospective association with poorer quality of life.

Automated summary

This study used a cohort of community-dwelling adults to establish the 10-year incidence and predictors of dizziness/vertigo, and its impacts on health-related quality of life. The results showed that age and presence of migraine were significant predictors of incident dizziness/vertigo, and dizziness/vertigo was associated with a significant decrease in quality of life.