Defining Clinical-Posturographic and Intra-Posturographic Discordances: What Do These Two Concepts Mean?

Philippe Perrin, Art Mallinson*, Christian Van Nechel, Laetitia Peultier-Celli, Hannes Petersen, Mans Magnusson, Herman Kingma, Raphael Maire

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

8 Citations (Web of Science)

Abstract

The European Society for Clinical Evaluation of Balance Disorders - ESCEBD - Executive Committee meets yearly to identify and address clinical equilibrium problems that are not yet well understood. This particular discussion addressed "discordances" (defined as "lack of agreement") in clinical assessment. Sometimes there is disagreement between a clinical assessment and measured abnormality (ies); sometimes the results within the assessment do not agree. This is sometimes thought of as "malingering" or an attempt to exaggerate what is wrong, but this is not always the case. The Committee discussed the clinical significance of unexpected findings in a patient's assessment. For example intraposturographic discordances sometimes exhibit findings (eg performance on more difficult trials may sometimes be better than on simpler trials). This can be suggestive of malingering, but in some situations can be a legitimate finding. The extreme malingerer and the genuine patient are at opposite ends of a spectrum but there are many variations along this spectrum and clinicians need to be cautious, as a posturography assessment may or may not be diagnostically helpful. Sometimes there is poor correlation between symptom severity and test results. Interpretation of posturography performance can at times be difficult and a patient's results must be correlated with clinical findings without stereotyping the patient. It is only in this situation that assessment in a diagnostic setting can be carried out in an accurate and unbiased manner.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)127-129
Number of pages3
JournalJournal of International Advanced Otology
Volume14
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Apr 2018

Keywords

  • Balance
  • posturography
  • discordance

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