Galvanic vestibular stimulation and its applications: a systematic review

Objective: Galvanic vestibular stimulation has been evaluated in the context of vestibular rehabilitation. The objective was to identify evidence in the scientific literature about the clinical applications of galvanic vestibular stimulation. Methods: In this systematic review, the articles describing the applications of galvanic vestibular stimulation were extracted from PubMed, Web of Science, MEDLINE, Scopus, LILACS and SciELO databases. The survey was limited to articles published in English, Portuguese and Spanish. All the articles about the clinical applications of galvanic vestibular stimulation were 1compiled. Repeated articles in the databases, literature review articles, case reports, lettersand editorials were excluded. The descriptors included: galvanic vestibular stimulation, postural balance, central nervous system diseases, vestibular diseases, spinal cord diseases and cognition. Results: The search strategy resulted in the initial selection of 994 articles; the reading of titles and abstracts was accomplished in 470 articles and the complete reading in 23 articles. Clinical applications of galvanic vestibular stimulation included Meniere's disease, vestibular neuritis, bilateral vestibular disorders, vestibular schwannoma, Parkinson's disease, ischemic central lesions, motor myelopathies, anxiety disorders, cognition and memory. Conclusion: Galvanic vestibular stimulation has been considered a potentially useful strategy for balance rehabilitation, since it has the effect of stimulating the central connections related to the postural balance, favoring new neuronal synapses that allow the partial or total recovery of postural imbalance. (c) 2022 Associacao Brasileira de Otorrinolaringologia e Cirurgia Cervico-Facial. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).