Intravenous histamine in otologic practice. Side effects in 2,347 administrations.

Intravenous (IV) histamine has been used extensively at the Otologic Medical Group, Inc, Los Angeles, for 30 years in the treatment of various conditions in which vasospasm was thought to play a part in the cause. We report the findings on 2,347 IV histamine administrations to 622 patients during a 33-month period. Dizziness was the indication for treatment in half of the patients. Sensorineural hearing impairments was the diagnosis in an additional 44%, and the majority of these had had a sudden impairment. Side effects were uncommon, never serious, and bore no relationship to the results of the histamine skin test or the patient's general medical problem. The IV histamine treatment resulted in improvement in symptoms in 36%, and almost half of those improvements were immediate.