Ocular vs. Cervical Vestibular Evoked Myogenic Potentials in Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objective: To compare utricular dysfunction with saccular dysfunction in benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), based on ocular vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (oVEMP) and cervical VEMP (cVEMP), respectively. Materials and Methods: We performed a literature search exploring utricular and saccular dysfunction in BPPV patients through June 2020 using oVEMP and cVEMP, respectively. The databases included Pubmed, Embase, CENTRAL, CNKI, Wan Fang Data, and CBM. The literatures were limited to Chinese and English. Inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria were defined. We adopted abnormal rate as the outcome. All statistical processes were conducted through software Review Manager. Considering the air-conducted sound (ACS) and bone conducted vibration (BCV) may have different mechanisms, and three types of diagnostic criteria for abnormal VEMP were available, sub-group analysis was performed simultaneously according to the sound stimuli and the diagnostic criteria of abnormal VEMP. Results: We retrieved 828 potentially relevant literatures, and finally 12 studies were included for meta-analysis of abnormal rate after duplication removal, titles and abstracts screening, and full-text reading. The abnormal rate of oVEMP was not significantly different from cVEMP (OR = 1.59, 95% CI = 0.99–2.57). But the abnormal rate was obviously different between the subgroups adopting ACS oVEMP and BCV oVEMP. In studies adopting ACS oVEMP, the abnormal rate of oVEMP was higher than cVEMP (OR = 1.85, 95% CI = 1.38–2.49). The abnormal rate of oVEMP was also higher than cVEMP when adopting asymmetry ratio (AR) and no response (NR) as diagnostic criteria (OR = 2.16, 95% CI = 1.61–2.89). Conclusion: The meta-analysis reveals that utricular dysfunction may be more predominant in BPPV compared with saccular dysfunction.