Tandem walking as a quick screening test for vestibular disorders

Objectives/Hypothesis

Although many screening tests of balance are available, few of them have been well validated for clinical or research uses. The goal of this study was to test an updated version of an old test, Tandem Walking, to determine how useful it is for screening patients with vestibular disorders.

Study Design

Case-control study.

Methods

Subjects were 90 adult patients with vestibular disorders and 292 healthy adult controls. They were tested on the number of correct tandem steps they could perform with arms crossed and eyes closed in a series of 10 steps. Correct steps could be nonconsecutive. Subjects were given one practice trial with eyes open and three experimental trials with eyes closed.

Results

Receiver operating characteristic (ROC), and sensitivity and specificity were calculated. ROC values, sensitivity, and specificity were, at best, only moderate, no matter how the age range was cut. Even for subjects in the age group with the highest ROC value (i.e., age less than 50 years), ROC = 0.8, sensitivity = 0.77, and specificity = 0.72.

Conclusions

These results indicate that 23% of patients will not be identified. Therefore, we recommend that if this test is used for screening patients in the clinic or healthy volunteers, the result should be interpreted with care.

Level of Evidence

3b Laryngoscope, 2017

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