Vestibular-Evoked Myogenic Potentials in Patients with Dehiscence of the Superior Semicircular Canal

Abstract

Recently Minor and co-workers described patients with sound- and pressure-induced vertigo due to dehiscence of bone overlying the superior semicircular canal. Identifying patients with this "new" vestibular entity is important, not only because the symptoms can be very incapacitating, but also because they are surgically treatable. We present symptoms and findings for three such patients. On exposure to sounds, especially in the frequency range 0.5-1 kHz, they showed vertical/torsional eye movements analogous to a stimulation of the superior semicircular canal. They also showed abnormally large sound-induced vestibular-evoked myogenic potentials (VEMP), i.e. the short latency sternomastoid muscle response considered to be of saccular origin. The VEMP also had a low threshold, especially in the frequency range 0.5-1 kHz. However, in response to saccular stimulation by skull taps, i.e. when the middle ear route was bypassed, the VEMP were not enlarged. This suggests that the relation between the sound-induced and the skull tap-induced responses can differentiate a large but normal VEMP from an abnormally large response due to dehiscence of bone overlying the labyrinth, because only the latter would produce large sound-induced VEMP compared to those induced by skull taps.