Immediate prediction of recovery, based on emotional impact of vertigo

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVE: This work presents deeper studies of comorbidity between anxiety and vestibular pathology. The aim of this work was to comprehend the reasons why patients do not feel "fully recovered" even though the treating professionals discharge them. We studied the features of personality that can favour the continuity of the condition. METHODS: The questionnaire for measuring the emotional impact of vertigo makes it possible to determine if the patient has a psychological style with a tendency to develop pathological anxiety levels. Anxiety is a subjective characteristic determinant in difficulties with medical treatment. The questionnaire was applied to 198 patients in Argentina and Mexico in parallel. Each pathology was treated by standard medical procedures. The study focused on determining the correlation between "feeling fully recovered or not at the end of treatment" and the questionnaire scores obtained before the approach. RESULTS: In more than 80% of cases, high scores (>15 points) on the questionnaire were correlated with the difficulty presented by the patients for full recovery from the pathology after medical treatment. CONCLUSIONS: The objective assessments (duration and intensity of symptoms, time of onset of the disease, etc.) do not exactly predict possible difficulties during treatment of vertigo. Consequently, we consider the patient's subjective assessment of how the vestibular pathology affects him or her to be determinant. That key information allows us to predict the course of the illness and the probability of a full recovery. (C) 2013 Elsevier Espana, S.L. All rights reserved.