Attack-free Interval of Meniere's Disease and Vestibular Meniere's Disease

Abstract

Meniere's disease and vestibular Meniere's disease have episodic vertigo followed by remission in which the patients feel perfectly well. Recurrences may come at intervals varying from a few days to several years. The duration of attacks showed an irregular pattern producing both a longest period without a vertigo attack and a shortest period without a vertigo attack. In this presentation, clinical characteristics between Meniere's disease and vestibular Meniere's disease were studied by using the maximum and minimum intervals. The following results were obtained.1. Most patients with a 1-2 year history of Meniere's disease were found to have a maximum attack-free interval of within 6 months. Patients with a history of 2-5 years and 5-10 years were found to have maximum attack-free intervals of 2-5 years.2. The minimum attack-free interval of Meniere's disease was not influenced by the duration of the disease.3. The minimum attack-free interval of Meniere's disease was observed most often within 7 days. The minimum attack-free interval of vestibular Meniere's disease was observed most often over 7 days.4. Regarding bilaterality, sex and age of onset, there was no significant difference in patient with a history of over 2 years in maximum and minimum attack-free intervals of Meniere's disease.5. Patients with Meniere's disease can be divided into 3 groups; those with cochlear and vestibular symptoms starting at the same time, and those with the vestibular symptoms starting before or after cochlear symptoms: All 3 groups had the same tendency in terms of maximum and minimum attack-free intervals.6. For the prognosis of Meniere's disease, it is convinient to use the accumulated frequency of maximum intervals.