Evaluation of vestibular function in patients affected by obstructive sleep apnea performing functional head impulse test (fHIT)

Purpose: Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is a common disease with significantly related complications. Since a connection between the vestibular nucleus and sleep regulator pathways has been demonstrated, vestibular evaluation in OSA patients was partially studied and none used functional head impulse test (fHIT) for this purpose. This paper aimed at evaluating the vestibular function in patients affected by OSA using fHIT, selecting patients who did not present any other related to cardiovascular, neurological, or metabolic diseases. Patients and Methods: Patients enrolled had a diagnosis of OSA by polysomnography type III and were cataloged according to American Association of Sleep Medicine criteria. Each patient underwent fHIT. Statistical significance was set at 0.05. Results: A total of 85 patients were enrolled in the study of which 50 had a diagnosis of OSA and were included in the case group, while 35 belonged to the control group. In 88.6% of subjects of the case group was evidenced a vestibular impairment with a substantial difference between the two study groups (p<0.05). Conclusion: The results show that the incidence of vestibular lesions in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea is underestimated and that fHIT can identify these lesions early.