Effects of structured exercise program on severity of dizziness, kinesiophobia, balance, fatigue .. in bilateral vestibular hypofunction, 2023, Genc

Effects of structured exercise program on severity of dizziness, kinesiophobia, balance, fatigue, quality of sleep, activities of daily living, and quality of life in bilateral vestibular hypofunction

Abstract
Background:

A minimal number of studies have documented the impact of Vestibular rehabilitation (VR) on the recovery rate of patients with bilateral vestibular hypofunction (BVH).
Objective:

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of structured VR programs on severity of dizziness, kinesiophobia, balance, fatigue, quality of sleep, activities of daily living (ADL) and quality of life (QoL) in subjects with chronic BVH.
Method:

Twenty-five participants diagnosed with BVH were included in the study. A structured VR program was applied in 50-minute sessions once a week and as a home exercise program 3 times a day over 8 weeks. Participants were evaluated for severity of dizziness with the visual analog scale, for kinesiophobia with the tampa scale of kinesiophobia, for balance with the Semitandem, tandem, and standing tests, for quality of sleep with the Pittsburgh sleep quality index, for ADL with the vestibular disorders activities of daily life, for QoL with dizziness handicap inventory and for fatigue with the fatigue severity scale at the baseline (T1), at 4th week (T2), 8th week (T3), and 20th week (T4) after study started.
Results:

Significant difference in terms of Tandem Test and 1 Leg Stand Test was found in favor of T3-T4 Period (P < .05). There were significant improvements in terms of vestibular disorders activities of daily life, tampa scale of kinesiophobia, Pittsburgh sleep quality index and dizziness handicap inventory in favor of the T3 to T4 Period (P < .05). Significant difference in terms of visual analog scale was found in favor of T2 Period (P < .05).
Conclusions:

A twelve-week structured VR program may enhance severity of dizziness, kinesiophobia, balance, quality of sleep, ADL and QoL in participants with chronic BVH.

https://journals.lww.com/md-journal...am_on_severity.22.aspx?context=LatestArticles

 

Right, this is seriously weird - could it be one of the many phony, possibly artificially-produced 'studies'?

It says:

"A twelve-week structured VR program may enhance severity..."

but it also says:

"In this study, we demonstrated that a 12-week vestibular rehabilitation program significantly improved the patients BVH patients quality of sleep in favor of T3 to T4 Period. We assume that this result is also affected by the patients compliance to the recommendations. Furthermore, we consider that the patients current balance and quality of sleep improved with the relief of the complaints of dizziness and kinesiophobia."

I'm not terribly with-it, but have I got the gist?

(Emphases added later for clarity)

 

Physics basically like: there's 1 chance in 10 million this could be a fluke so we will reserve judgment until we get better results.

While doctors are like: yeah we think it's alright and probably because of the explanation we like best