What is Vertigo?
Vertigo in itself is not a disease, but a symptom that describes sensation of spinning, dizziness, or faintness. It happens due to imbalance in the equilibrium of the body. The condition can be described as some feelings that occur in this medical complication like lightheadedness or drowsiness.
Symptoms of Vertigo
Some of the very common symptoms of vertigo include nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and faintness. In addition some symptoms are also there, like:
1. Sweating: Sweating caused due to faintness and dizziness or weakness in the body.
2. Because the mind is not picking up the right messages, the person might feel difficulty in doing activities like standing and walking that require physical strength.
3. Confusion created by signals send by the ear and eye causes abnormal eye movement.
4. Light-headedness is caused due to faintness.
5. After traveling for long hours mind might feel things in the surrondings are moving and spinning.
6. Absent mindedness causes decreased level of consciouness in the person.
7. The sufferer might feel sound of ringing in his ears and severity of this condition can further result in hearing loss.
8. One of the very rare symptoms include difficulty in speaking.
Types of Vertigo
1. Subjective vertigo: It is a symptom where the sufferer feels everything around him and he himself is revolving in space. Sufferer might have the feeling as same as faintness.
2. Objective vertigo: The feeling the sufferer has in this case is just hypothetical or is considered as one perception of him that he is moving with the surroundings around him.
3. Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV): It can be defined as sudden occurrence of faints and dizziness in the body in accordance to the surrondings. It happens due to the confusion in signals send to the brain to perform activities. The body stimulate to a action after hearing or looking at. This is a vestibular case, where congusion in series of signals send to ear structure happens and incorrect or no signal are received by the brain, resulting in a feeling of black out or faintness. The onset is sudden with out any occurrence of any trusted cause.Due to the sudden onset it can be considered as stroke. Almost every symptoms are same in both the cases, despite the fact that BPPV remains for short period, like 30-40 sec, and stroke remains for long period.
4. Vestibular vertigo – Feeling of dizziness or lightheadedness caused due to complication in the vestibular system results in vestibular vertigo.
5. Cerebral Vertigo: Complication in brain region causing faintness or dizziness in the body results in cerebral vertigo.
6. Ocular vertigo – Weak eye sight sometimes causes problem of dizziness or faintness, while looking at something for long period. The condition is defined as ocular vertigo.
7. Labyrinthine vertigo – Disturbance in the equilibrium of the body due to Meniere’s disease is defined as Labyrinthine vertigo.
8. Postural vertigo: Sudden feeling of faintness and lightheadedness caused due to sitting in particular posture or position for long time is named as postural vertigo. To avoid this problem one should try to practice an approach of not spending much time in one posture.
9. Cervical vertigo: Injury in the neck region can initiate discomfort feeling in the sufferer known as cervical vertigo.
10. Disabling positional vertigo – It is caused due to putting head in upright position for long period. It is combination of imbalance equilibrium and positional vertigo symptoms.
11. Alternobaric vertigo – People who constantly feel variations in barometric pressure tend to have alternobaric vertigo.
Causes of Vertigo
Main reason behind vertigo is improper functioning of inner ear balance system or in short vestibular system. It is one of the symptom or indicator of complication Meniere’s disease.
Vertigo is quite similar to paraneoplastic syndrome (PNS), a multi-faceted neurological disorder related to incipent cancer leisons.
Traveling in flight and boat for long hours results in vertigo. Because long hours of traveling produces turbulence in the mind of the traveler and it might take few days to come out of it. Exposing ear to extreme sound pressuree causes problem. In simple words, it can be said that any condition or situation that affects the brain causes vertigo.
The problem occurs due to improper functioning of inner ear. The condition can be defined as when the messages send by the ear and eye are different, it leads to create confusion in the brain of a person. The confusion creates dizziness and faintness in the person.
Sometimes vertigo is caused due to dehydration in the body happening due to problems like nausea and vomiting. Severity in the condition can lead to shock and loss of hearing power.
Other than this causes, several uncommon causes of vertigo include:
1. Consumption of high amount of alcohol: Alcohol results in absent mindedness in the person, further rsulting in vertigo.
2. Too much exposure to sun or heat causes hypothermia in the person resulting in vertigo.
3. Intake of insulin to treat emergency caused due to diabetes results in vertigo.
4. Kidney failure results in faintness and dizziness.
5. Head injury or stroke can further cause vertigo.
6. Any infection or poisoning in the body can result in faintness, vomiting, and dizziness in the mind of the person.
Diagnosis of Vertigo
Diagnosis of vertigo is mainly done by testing the balance of vestibular system and auditory system. But initially doctor might check the ear and eye movements of the sufferer.
Series of tests like electronystagmography (ENG), rotation tests, Caloric reflex test, and Computerized Dynamic Posturography (CDP) are done to check the balance of vestibular system functionality.
Series of tests like pure-tone audiometry, speech audiometry, acoustic-reflex, electrocochleography (ECoG), otoacoustic emissions (OAE), and auditory brainstem response test are done to check whether there is any loss in hearing or not.
Sometimes in the state of confusion, complication in brain is also detected by tests like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computerized axial tomography (CAT).
To check for the dizziness, the doctor might take provocation test that involve placing the head of a person in different position to analyze which position causes feeling of dizziness. It is generally done to detect benign positional vertigo.
To check the problem in balance in vestibular system, the doctor might ask a person to stand still with closed eyes for sometime. If the person have a feeling of light-headedness or dizziness in his mind then it is confirmed that he is having problem in the middle ear.
Caloric test is conducted to remove the confusion between vertigo and arthritis of the neck. And, brain scanning is done to confirm that the symptoms are of vertigo not of tinnitus.
Treatment of Vertigo
Tracing out the exact cause of the illness can help greatly in treating the problem completely. To trace out the cause, three assumptions are taken care like some problem in inner ear, in the brain, or in the nerves located between the inner ear and the brain. Each cause should be examined properly before giving treatment.
1. Problem in inner ear: Problem in inner ear causes disturbance in the balance of whole body. It can be best treated by going through vestibular rehabilitation. The rehabilitation consists of a series of tests and therapies that are done to cure any problem in the inner ear. Success results of the treatment can be obtained with in two weeks. But sometimes it might take six months to completely cure the problem.
2. Problem in the Brain: Sometimes problem within the brain can further cause problem like vertigo in a person. It generally caused to misalignment of signals traveling through neurotransmitters in the body. Treatment is done through the use of neurotransmitter reuptake inhibitors. The inhibitors fix up the problem in the brain and start showing improvement with in six months.
3. Problem in the nerves between the inner ear and the brain:
The function of the nerves is to transfer signal to the ear from the brain and if some defect occurs in this functioning, it causes for vertigo.
There are many treatments that can be taken to cure the defect like antihistamines, calcium antagonists and the Epley manoeuvre.
Some other treatments are also there, like:
If vertigo is caused due to deficiency of neurochemicals then GABA modulators including gabapentin and baclofen are given to fill the deficiency. Other medications like antihistamines, anticholinergics, and benzodiazepines are given to recover the patient from this disease.
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