Establishing a "Vestibular Migraine Diagnosis Questionnaire" and Testing Its Validity.

OBJECTIVE: To establish a questionnaire and check its validity and reliability for the diagnosis of vestibular migraine in patients reporting recurrent vestibular symptoms.

BACKGROUND: Vestibular migraine is the most common cause for recurrent spontaneous vertigo. However, it is still underdiagnosed needing validated and reliable screening instruments such as ID Migraine, that can be used in primary care settings, dizziness, and migraine clinics.

MATERIALS AND METHOD: Sixty consecutive patients referred to our dizziness clinic with recurring vestibular symptoms were given a questionnaire that they filled in, consisting of 8 short and simple questions. The questionnaire-based diagnosis was compared with the diagnosis based on face-to-face interview and clinical examination. Test stability was evaluated by asking the patients to fill in the questionnaire a week later during a second visit. κ analysis was used to assess item-specific test-retest reliability and also the conformity between the questionnaire-based diagnosis and the clinical diagnosis.

RESULTS: The conformity between the clinical diagnosis and the diagnosis based on the questionnaire was 83.3% and the κ coefficient was 0.666 (good). Sensitivity of the questionnaire was 82.8% (24/29) and the specificity was 83.9% (26/31). The κ values in test-retest repetition were good to excellent (0.71 to 0.87) when each question was considered.

CONCLUSIONS: The validity of the "Vestibular Migraine Diagnosis Questionnaire" was good and its reliability was good to excellent indicating that it can be used as a screening tool in identifying patients with vestibular migraine in our country.