PubMed Health⌕ Search
Home/Archive/PubMed

PubMed · 10026710

The dizzy patient.

R W Baloh
View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

A patient's history usually contains key information regarding the type of dizziness and the best way to direct diagnostic workup. In dizziness with a vestibular cause (benign positional vertigo, vestibular neuritis, Meniere's disease, migraine, vertebrobasilar insufficiency), patients often describe their world as spinning, whirling, or tilting. Treatment should be directed at the underlying cause whenever possible, and various antivertiginous and antiemetic medications can be used to suppress symptoms. Initiation of a vestibular exercise program as soon as possible after injury helps ensure the best compensation possible.

Explore related subjects

DizzinessHumansMeniere DiseaseMigraine DisordersPostureVertigoVestibular DiseasesJournal ArticleReview

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

R W Baloh. 1999. The dizzy patient.. https://doi.org/10.3810/pgm.1999.02.555

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related citations

PubMed2006

A signal analysis technique of vestibulo-ocular reflex stimulated with impulsive head movements.

Eye movements have been investigated in several areas of medicine and also elsewhere, such as in psychology or even in the development of human-computer interfaces. In the last few years we have designed a technique to stimulate, measure and analyze vestibulo-ocular reflex eye movements. In the otoneurological literature these are seen as a novel and promising means of revealing certain disorders and diseases associated with vertigo. Vestibulo-ocular reflex is stimulated by impulsive head movements. We developed the present pattern recognition technique to detect the stimulus (impulsive head movements) and the vestibulo-ocular reflex (response eye movements) generated from signals and to compute the latency and the gain values between them. Using our technique to calculate these attributes, we obtained clearly different results for a group of 22 dizzy patients than for a group of 30 healthy subjects.

Dizziness↗
PubMed2006

Is psychogenic dizziness the exact diagnosis?

The main goal of the study is to determine the exact ratio of pure psychogenic dizziness. Patients from vertigo outpatient clinic were evaluated by SCL-90 R questionnaire, interviews, vestibular tests and magnetic resonance imaging (when needed). Five hundred and eighteen patients were evaluated for this study. While 45.2% of the patients have at least one abnormal psychogenic scale (somatization, obsessive-compulsiveness, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety etc.), only 9% of the patients were diagnosed as psychogenic dizziness according to the interview. One percent of 518 had no organic cause for dizziness and also diagnosed as pure psychogenic dizziness. Our results suggest that patients with dizziness need to be evaluated by psychological tests routinely and patients with high-test scores must consult a psychiatrist who is familiar with dizziness symptomatology.

Dizziness↗
PubMed2006

Rehabilitation exercise for treatment of vestibular disorder: a case study.

Vertigo and dizziness are common symptoms in the general population. While the clinical picture is well known and widely described, there are different interpretations of Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. The purpose of this case report was to describe the treatment of a 56 year old woman with complains of positional vertigo for 35 consecutive years. She suffered from a sudden onset of rotatory, unilateral horizontal canal type benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV). The symptoms started a day after falling from a bus, where she injured her head. Otherwise her medical history was unremarkable. She was treated with an individualized home exercise program of eye movement exercises, Brandt/Daroff exercises, and general conditioning exercises (i.e., laying on the left side from sitting on the bed, while the head rotated 45 degrees to the right, waiting for about one minute; twice a day on gradual basis, not laying on the side all the way, but to use enough pillows to lay about at 60 degrees). Four weeks from the start of physical therapy, the patient was free of symptoms, even when her neck was in the extended position.

Dizziness↗