Clinical practicality of the dizziness handicap inventory for evaluating dizziness in the Mandarin Chinese-speaking population: a prospective cross-sectional analysis

Abstract

Objective

To explore the clinical practicality of the dizziness handicap inventory (DHI) in the Mandarin Chinese-speaking population and compare patients’ and physicians’ assessments of the impact of dizziness on the quality of life using the DHI.

Design

Prospective cross-sectional.

Study sample

Overall, 144 consecutive patients aged ≥ 18 years seeking treatment for dizziness in an Ear-Nose-Throat clinic in China.

Results

Some items in the DHI could not be completed by both patients (46/144, 31.9%) and physicians (26/144, 18.1%). In fully completed DHIs (98/144, 68.1%), the patients’ self-assessment scores were higher than the physicians’ assessment scores (average 44.04 ± 21.38 vs 35.94 ± 16.99; p < 0.05). The strength of the correlation between the patients’ and physicians’ total DHI scores was high (r = 0.80; p < 0.05). Moreover, at a cut-off point of 18, the discrepancy scores of 77.6% (76/98) of the cases did not exceed the minimum detectable change (MDC) of the DHI.

Conclusions

The clinical practicality of the DHI in such settings requires improvement. Even though physician interviews can increase the degree of questionnaire completion, not all items can be completed. Although the physicians’ assessment scores were lower than the patients’ self-assessment scores, the majority of the discordancy scores were within the MDC of the DHI.

Keywords:

• Dizziness
• inventory
• quality of life
• China
• patient-reported outcome

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to express our sincere appreciation to the editor and the reviewers for their helpful suggestions. We would also like to acknowledge the hearing technicians at west China hospital of Sichuan university for assistance in data collection. And thanks to the following otolaryngologists for their suggestions: Cao Xueqiu, Yang Fengling, Kong Weili, Zhu Jiao, Wu Yan, Xiang Ting, Guan Liping, and Wang Xunyi.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.