The Significant Relationships Between Otolith End Organ Function and Audiometric Thresholds

A number of years ago, Neil Shepard and I co-edited the text Balance Function Assessment and Management. It now is in its third edition, thanks to the contributions of its many authors.

One of the chapters, titled “Within and Between Measure Relationships Between Balance Function Tests: Illustrative Cases,”[1] represented an attempt at evaluating the relationships among the various dizziness tests. Our feeling was that nothing like that had been done in the past and, even though the chapter consisted of little else than many correlations (i.e., with no correction for multiple comparisons), the results were in some cases very interesting.

For example, we observed that there were significant negative correlations between the total caloric response and phase leads that occurred at .01 and .02 Hz. That is, as total caloric slow phase eye velocity increased (i.e., within limits, this is normally a healthy sign), the phase abnormalities decreased.

This month's featured article was authored by our colleagues at the University of Tennessee (Doettl et al). In this case, the investigators were interested in determining the relationships, if any, between age-related hearing loss and the function of the otolith end organs (i.e., the utricle and saccule).

The subjects were 34 participants that formed two groups. Group 1 consisted of 33 ears (mean age 61 years) with “normal” audiometric thresholds. Group 2 was 27 ears (mean age 63 years) with a pure-tone average (PTA) of 40 dB.

The independent variable here was the group assignment (there were two groups: “normal” hearing and age-related hearing loss). The dependent variables were cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (cVEMP) and ocular vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (oVEMP) amplitude and latency. Further, much like we did years ago, the investigators conducted a series of correlation coefficients in addition to t-tests.

Without giving anything away, the editors think you will be interested in the findings of this investigation.

Publication History

Article published online:
17 February 2022

• Reference

• 1 Within and Between Measure Relationships Between Balance Function Tests: Illustrative Cases. In: Jacobson GP, Shepard NT. eds. Balance Function Assessment and Management. San Diego: Plural Publishing; 2008: 613-635