[Intra-individual reproducibility of tilt table studies in diagnosis of vasovagal syncope].

Neurally-induced syncope appears to be the underlying pathophysiologic mechanism in many patients with unexplained syncope. Diagnosis of vasovagal syncope, however, remains difficult and constitutes in many cases an exclusion diagnosis. The present study thus aimed to determine the yield of tilt-table testing in the work-up of patients with unexplained syncope and most importantly to examine the reproducibility of the results of this method. Twenty-four patients with a history of syncope and 11 healthy volunteers were examined on 2 days. In 10 patients, symptoms could be provoked during tilting, in 8 during both tests, in 2 only on one occasion. Only 1 of 11 volunteers developed presyncope during tilting which was not reproducible during the second test. These findings resulted in a sensitivity of 42% and a specificity of 91% for the protocol employed in this study. Overall reproducibility was 91% which suggests that this tilt-table protocol is suitable for evaluation of therapeutic interventions in patients with neurally-mediated syncope.