Cognitive-behavioural therapy for chronic subjective dizziness: Predictors of improvement in Dizziness Handicap Inventory at 6 months posttreatment.

Background: Chronic subjective dizziness (CSD), which was superseded by persistent postural-perceptual dizziness as of 2017, has a great impact on patients' quality of life. Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) is a promising treatment, with demonstrated effectiveness as a CSD treatment; however, no studies have examined positive predictors of its effectiveness in the long term.Aims/objectives: This study aimed to examine predictors of improvement in the Dizziness Handicap Inventory (DHI) in patients with CSD at 6 months after CBT.Materials and methods: Thirty-seven patients with CSD who were recruited from April 2012 to November 2014 and completed group CBT were analysed. Single and multiple regression analyses with forward-backward stepwise model selection method was used to examine the independent predictors of long-term improvement in the change score of DHI.Results: Presence or absence of comorbid anxiety disorders (p = .023) was a significant positive predictive factor for improvement of DHI from pretreatment to 6-month follow-up.Conclusions and significance: The presence of comorbid anxiety disorders predicted considerable improvement of DHI from pretreatment to 6-month follow-up. Group therapy including interoceptive exposure using vestibular rehabilitation, along with psychoeducation and behavioural experiments with graded exposure, may be particularly suitable in treating patients with CSD.