The effect of ocular fixation on symptom scores of meniere patients during meniere attack

The vestibular suppressant treatments used during vertigo attacks in Ménière's disease (MD) are usually inadequate. In this study, we aimed to demonstrate the benefit of ipsilateral gaze fixation by comparing patients' symptom scores during an attack before and after applying this technique. Thirty-one patients who were diagnosed as having MD between March 2017 and December 2020 were evaluated by the same author. For all patients, the diagnosis of MD was made by the same author based on typical history, audiological examination, and evaluation of nystagmus videos recorded during a vertigo attack. During vertigo attacks, patients were advised to look in the opposite direction of the nystagmus and fix their gaze until their complaints resolved. The patients rated the severity of the vertigo attack before and after fixation on a scale of 0 to 10. Gaze fixation reduced the severity of acute attacks in all patients, with mean symptom severity scores of 8.7 before gaze fixation and 1.9 after gaze fixation. Ipsilateral gaze fixation resulted in a statistically significant improvement in patients' vertigo symptom scores (p < 0.001). MD patients benefited greatly from the method we described.