Cross-cultural adaptation of the Dizziness Handicap Inventory – child/adolescent to Spanish version. Analysis of its application in children

Validity of Italian adaptation of the Vanderbilt Paediatric Dizziness Handicap Inventory

“…In line with the authors 23 , 24 , we suggest that the functional limitation is more prevalent in children feeling dizzy, probably due to the restriction of the activities with the intention of avoiding the onset of acute symptoms. Nonetheless, as highlighted in the literature 16 , the emotional and functional impact of vertigo or balance disturbances in children is less than in the general population. Certainly children improve quickly and compensate more easily than adults: this explains why few children present a DHI-PC with disability indexes and always mild-moderate.…”

“…There is currently a version of the DHI children/adolescent (DHI-CA) published by Sousa et al 15 in Brazilian Portuguese, adapted for use in children over 4 years of age. Very recently, a cross-cultural adaptation of this version was carried by Sommerfleckout et al 16 into Spanish (Argentine). To our knowledge, there is not an Italian questionnaire available for the Italian younger population and none referred to caregivers of paediatric patients.…”

“…In particular, in 2010 Nola et al 8 translated into Italian the DHI and, more recently, Colnaghi et al 17 translated the Situational Vertigo Questionnaire (SVQ) and the Activity-Specific Balance Confidence Scale (ABC). It was demonstrated that when used in association with the medical history and physical examination, the DHI was useful in providing reproducible, quantifiable, and applicable results for patient wellbeing 16 , 18 . Equally, in the present study, the Italian version of DHI-PC proved to be satisfactory for measurement properties, as a discriminating and evaluative tool.…”