Impact of Ménière's disease on quality of life.

OBJECTIVE: To describe health-related quality of life among patients with Ménière's disease in whom conventional therapy failed and who requested further medical intervention.

STUDY DESIGN: Pretreatment interviews to establish baseline quality of life characteristics before medical intervention.

SETTING: Tertiary referral center.

PATIENTS: 19 adult patients, 12 women and 7 men, whose ages ranged from 32 to 83 years.

INTERVENTIONS: Pretreatment baseline interviews.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Quality of Well-being Scale, SF-12 Physical and SF-12 Mental scores, Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale.

RESULTS: The Quality of Well-being score (0.561) indicated a loss of well-being from 1 to 0.561 = 43.9% in patients with Ménière's disease as compared with people with no symptoms and full functional status. The hypothesis that Quality of Well-being scores on days on which patients had symptoms characteristic of acute Ménière's disease episodes were lower than Quality of Well-being scores on days on which they did not report such symptoms was supported (p = 0.000). The reported SF-12 Physical mean score (38.9) was greater than 1 standard deviation below the general mean of 50, and the SF-12 Mental score (44.2) was 0.5 standard deviation below the general mean of 50. The Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale score was 23, with a score 16 or greater indicating clinically significant depression.

CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that the condition of patients with Ménière's disease may be measured by these instruments, that the instruments are in substantial agreement about the serious impairment in patients' quality of life, and that the days with acute episodes of Ménière's disease symptoms are significantly worse than the days without such symptoms. Treating physicians indicated surprise at the breadth and the level of debilitation characteristic of these patients with Ménière's disease.