Int. Adv. Otol. 2010; 6(2); 245-251

Value of head shake sensory organization test (HS-SOT) in detecting subclinical vestibular disorder in type 2 diabetic patients.
Mohamed Abd Al-Ghaffar  Abd Al-Rahman,  Waleed A.M. Abdelhamid, Mervat Mohamed Atea  
Sohag University,  Sohag City,  Egypt.   

Objective: Glucose metabolism has a significant impact on inner ear physiology, and both hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia may affect its normal function. Patients with glucose metabolism alteration, as it happens in diabetes, may present with auditory or vestibular symptoms, or both. Recent clinical studies have demonstrated that the Head Shake Sensory Organization Test (HS-SOT) of Computerized Dynamic Posturography (CDP) can be considered a good enhancement and supplement to the
standard SOT test in detection of subclinical vestibular lesions or identifying compensated cases. The aim of this research is to study the value of HS-SOT in detection of sub clinical or compensated vestibular deficits in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Materials and Methods: Thirty patients with type 2 Diabetes Mellitus aged 40- 50 years constituted the study group. They were age and sex matched to 20 normal subjects. The following procedures were carried out: a medical history, otological examinations, detailed vertigo history, pure tone audiometry, acoustic impedance tests, videonystagmography, standard and head shake SOT Posturography.

Results: no subjective dizziness and no abnormalities regarding videonystagmography and standard SOT were noted in all tested patient apart from 3 patients (10%) of the cases, showed abnormalities in standard SOT. However, significant changes occurred after doing head shake SOT where 28 patients (93.3%) showed abnormal condition 5 in the three axes of HS-SOT under this study.

Conclusions: HS-SOT is more sensitive than standard SOT Posturography and VNG in detecting subclinical vestibular lesions in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.