Validation of the Vestibular Migraine Patient Assessment Tool and Handicap Inventory (VM-PATHI) for Adolescents

Approximately 1.59 million children in the United States have experienced issues due to dizziness symptoms, yet awareness and appropriate management of dizziness is greatly limited among pediatric providers. Vestibular migraine (VM) is the most common cause of episodic dizziness in children and adults. Dizziness, especially in conjunction with other migraine symptoms (headache, photophobia, phonophobia, etc.) can profoundly decrease quality of life, so effective treatment of VM is of utmost importance.

Unfortunately, there is sparse research on effective treatment methods for VM, and even less for vestibular migraine of childhood (VMC), for which diagnostic criteria was recently defined by the Bárány Society in 2021. Lifestyle changes are often a large part of the treatment plan, and pharmacological treatment is also common, but their efficacies in treating VMC are less than ideal. In truth, there is yet to be a "gold-standard" medication or other treatment method for VMC.

There is a dire need for structured research on the efficacy of different treatments, both lifestyle and pharmacological, in treating pediatric patients with vestibular migraine. However, in order to conduct this research, a validated inventory to objectively and reliably measure vestibular migraine symptoms in children is required. Such a measure would be valuable to monitor patients' progress in response to different interventions over time.

Existing validated measures often used to assess vestibular migraine in children, such as the Dizziness Handicap Inventory - Child and Adolescents (DHI-CA) or the Pediatric Migraine Disability Assessment Score (PedMIDAS), can be useful, but only assess specifics aspects VMC, such as dizziness or migraine. They do not account for the wide array of other symptoms associated with pediatric vestibular migraine.

The Vestibular Migraine Patient Assessment Tool and Handicap Inventory (VM-PATHI) - pronounced "Vempathy" - is a symptom inventory designed by Dr. Jeffrey Sharon and colleagues specifically to assess VM in adults. To our knowledge, it is the first validated symptom inventory that is specific to vestibular migraine. His group also worked to estimate a minimal clinically important difference (MCID) for the VM-PATHI in adults, finding that a change in VM-PATHI score of 6 points or more likely demonstrates an authentic clinical change in patient condition.