Adoption of clinical practice guidelines in cases of benign paroxysmal positional vertigo

PURPOSE: Despite being one of the most common types of the peripheral vertigo encountered in clinical practice, benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) remains underdiagnosed and undertreated, even in affluent health care systems. The publication of fully updated clinical practice guidelines significantly facilitated the diagnosis and treatment of BPPV. This study evaluates the adoption of the guidelines in our clinical setting and reviews further recommendations for quality-of-care improvement. METHODS: This retrospective cross-sectional survey included a total of 1155 adult patients diagnosed with BPPV at the biggest tertiary care center in the country during a 5-year period (2017–2021). The data for the first three years (2017–2020) and 919 patients were collected in full, and for the remaining 236 patients (2020–2021) only partially due to the disturbance in referrals caused by COVID-19 pandemic. RESULTS: The familiarity with and adherence to the published clinical guidelines by physicians judged by patients’ charts and our health care database were overall unsatisfactory. The adherence varied from 0 to 40.5% in our sample. The recommendations for making the diagnosis and for repositioning procedure as first-line therapy were followed in only 20–30% of cases. CONCLUSION: There are large opportunities for improvement in quality of care of BPPV patients. Apart from constant and systematic education at the primary health care level, the health care system may need to adopt more advanced measures of ensuring better adherence to guidelines and subsequent reduction in medical costs.