While most acute vestibular disorders do not require a hospital stay, admission to inpatient care because of acute vertigo, dizziness and balance problems (VDB) seems to be more frequent than necessary. The aim of this study was to analyse the frequency and regional distribution of hospital admissions for acute VDB and to estimate the associated healthcare costs.

We used the complete database of inpatient stays from the French healthcare system between January 2014 and December 2022.

Patients were included if they had a typical diagnosis code and at least one of the diagnostic or therapeutic procedures for vestibular diseases. Information on regional deprivation and physician density at a regional level is included in our analyses.

Inpatient stay for acute VDB.

Out of 277 409 765 hospitalisations, a total of 482 578 inpatient stays could be directly attributed to VDB as a primary diagnosis. Patients were predominantly female (range 63.0%–64.3%) and older (from 2014 to 2022, mean age 52.8 to 56.0 years). Total costs per year ranged from 61.3 million euros in 2020 to 72.8 million in 2021 with an average cost per case ranging between 1237 and 1394 euros. There was a positive association between age, general practitioner density, neurologist density and a high hospitalisation rate of the respective area with β=0.01 (95% CI 0.003 to 0.02; p=0.0005), β=0.13 (95% CI 0.12 to 0.14; p

High social deprivation was independently associated with higher hospitalisation rates. We show considerable regional variations of hospital admissions for VDB in France. Awareness and training efforts for VDB must be increased.