The diagnosis of Meniere's disease (MD) and vestibular migraine (VM) is primarily based on clinical criteria and their differentiation is often difficult. Currently, there are no known definitive diagnostic tests that can reliably distinguish the two conditions. Patients with MD and patients with VM are treated differently, therefore improving the diagnosis of these two pathologies should avoid errors in management. A systematic review was conducted according to PRISMA guidelines. Medline-Ovid and Embase databases were used to conduct a thorough search of English-language publications dating from 1948 to March 2016. The primary search objective was to identify all papers explicitly comparing MD and VM in order to clarify and validate the diagnosis of these two diseases. A total of 13 articles out of 831 were reviewed. Among other differences, MD showed later age of onset, more hearing loss, tinnitus, aural fullness, abnormal nystagmus, abnormal caloric testing results, abnormal vestibular evoked myogenic potential and endolymphatic hydrops. VM showed more headaches, photophobia, vomiting and aura. Even though differences were noted between the two diseases, only one study focused on assessing the differences between VM, MD and patients fulfilling both diagnostic criteria (MDVM). This study showed no difference between the three groups. Since the introduction of the new International Headache Society and Barany Society criteria for VM, no studies have focused on comparing these three groups. We strongly encourage authors to focus on comparing MD and VM from MDVM in future studies to help adequately distinguish the diagnosis of both diseases.
Keywords: Endolymphatic hydrops; Meniere’s disease; Migraine-associated vertigo; Migraine-associated vestibulopathy; Migraine-related vertigo; Migraine-related vestibulopathy; Migrainous vertigo; Vestibular migraine.