TY - GEN A1 - Korda, Athanasia A1 - Zamaro, Ewa A1 - Wagner, Franca A1 - Morrison, Miranda A1 - Schneider, Erich A1 - Caversaccio, Marco Domenico A1 - Sauter, Thomas C. A1 - Mantokoudis, Georgios T1 - Acute vestibular syndrome: is skew deviation a central sign? T2 - Journal of Neurology N2 - Objective Skew deviation results from a dysfunction of the graviceptive pathways in patients with an acute vestibular syndrome (AVS) leading to vertical diplopia due to vertical ocular misalignment. It is considered as a central sign, however, the prevalence of skew and the accuracy of its test is not well known . Methods We performed a prospective study from February 2015 until September 2020 of all patients presenting at our emergency department (ED) with signs of AVS. All patients underwent clinical HINTS and video test of skew (vTS) followed by a delayed MRI, which served as a gold standard for vestibular stroke confirmation. Results We assessed 58 healthy subjects, 53 acute unilateral vestibulopathy patients (AUVP) and 24 stroke patients. Skew deviation prevalence was 24% in AUVP and 29% in strokes. For a positive clinical test of skew, the cut-off of vertical misalignment was 3 deg with a very low sensitivity of 15% and specificity of 98.2%. The sensitivity of vTS was 29.2% with a specificity of 75.5%. Conclusions Contrary to prior knowledge, skew deviation proved to be more prevalent in patients with AVS and occurred in every forth patient with AUVP. Large skew deviations (> 3.3 deg), were pointing toward a central lesion. Clinical and video test of skew offered little additional diagnostic value compared to other diagnostic tests such as the head impulse test and nystagmus test. Video test of skew could aid to quantify skew in the ED setting in which neurotological expertise is not always readily available. KW - Acute stroke KW - Acute unilateral vestibulopathy KW - Test of skew KW - VOG KW - Vertigo KW - Video-oculography Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-021-10692-6 SN - 1432-1459 SN - 0340-5354 VL - 269 IS - 3 SP - 1396 EP - 1403 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Morrison, Miranda A1 - Kerkeni, Hassen A1 - Korda, Athanasia A1 - Räss, Simone A1 - Caversaccio, Marco Domenico A1 - Abegg, Mathias A1 - Schneider, Erich A1 - Mantokoudis, Georgios T1 - Automated alternate cover test for 'HINTS' assessment: a validation study T2 - European archives of oto-rhino-laryngology and head & neck N2 - Objective The alternate cover test (ACT) in patients with acute vestibular syndrome is part of the ‘HINTS’ battery test. Although quantitative, the ACT is highly dependent on the examiner’s experience and could theoretically vary greatly between examiners. In this study, we sought to validate an automated video-oculography (VOG) system based on eye tracking and dedicated glasses. Methods We artificially induced a vertical strabismus to simulate a skew deviation on ten healthy subjects, aged from 26 to 66, using different press-on Fresnel prisms on one eye while recording eye position with VOG of the contralateral eye. We then compared the system’s performance to that of a blinded trained orthoptist using conventional, semi-quantitative method of skew measurement known as the alternate prism cover test (APCT) as a gold standard. Results We found a significant correlation between the reference APCT and the Skew VOG (Pearson’s R2 = 0.606, p < 0.05). There was a good agreement between the two tests (intraclass correlation coefficient 0.852, 95 CI 0.728–0.917, p < 0.001). The overall accuracy of the VOG was estimated at 80.53% with an error rate of 19.46%. There was no significant difference in VOG skew estimations compared with the gold standard except for very small skews. Conclusions VOG offers an objective and quantitative skew measurement and proved to be accurate in measuring vertical eye misalignment compared to the ACT with prisms. Precision was moderate, which mandates a sufficient number of tests per subject. KW - Skew deviation KW - Validation KW - Test of skew KW - Alternate cover test KW - Video-oculography Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00405-021-06998-w SN - 1434-4726 SP - 2873 EP - 2879 ER -