Incidence of Ménière's disease

Abstract

The incidence of Ménière's disease in Sweden for the year 1973 has been calculated as one case in a population of 2,163. This gives an overall incidence of 46/100,000. Extrapolating the Swedish incidence data to the population of the United States, there should have been 97,000 cases of Ménière's disease treated as inpatients or outpatients during the year 1973. The incidence in the United States of Ménière's disease, cochlear type, is considered to be even higher. In addition, the Swedish statistic for some other disorders, including otosclerosis, are reported. For otosclerosis, the yearly incidence in Sweden is 12/100,000 or one case in a population of 8,414. This could be extrapolated to 25,000 patients with clinical otosclerosis in the United States for the year 1973. By comparison, Ménière's disease, by stringent diagnostic criteria, is approximately four times as common as clinical otosclerosis. It is also more common than all laryngeal carcinomas, all salivary gland tumors, both benign and malignant, as well as acute epiglottitis and acute nephritis.