OBJECTIVE: The aim of this systematic review is to critically assess the effectiveness of vestibular rehabilitation (VR) administered either alone or in combination with other neurorehabilitation strategies in patients with neurological disorders. DATA SOURCES: An electronic search was conducted by two independent reviewers in the following databases: Medline (PubMed), the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR). STUDY SELECTION: All clinical studies carried out on adult patients with a diagnosis of neurological disorders who performed VR provided alone or in combination with other therapies were included. DATA EXTRACTION: Screening of titles, abstracts, and full texts and data extraction were undertaken independently by pairs of reviewers. Included studies were quality appraised using a modified version of the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. DATA SYNTHESIS: The summary of results was reported following the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses). Twelve studies were included in the review. All the included studies, with one exception, report that improvements provided by customized VR in subject affected by a central nervous system diseases are greater than traditional rehabilitation programs alone. CONCLUSION: Due to the lack of high quality studies and heterogeneity of treatments protocols, clinical practice recommendations on the efficacy of VR cannot be made. Results show that VR programs is safe and could easily implement standard neurorehabilitation protocols in patients affected by neurological disorders. Hence, more high-quality randomized controlled trials of vestibular rehabilitation in patients with neurological disorders are needed.

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