Vestibular Physical Therapy

Vestibular Rehabilitation

Ninety million Americans (42 percent of the population) will complain of dizziness to their doctors at least once in their lifetime (NIH).

Vestibular vertigo accounts for one-third of dizziness/vertigo symptoms in the medical setting.

Research on the personal and health care burden of ill health usually focuses on specific diseases rather than symptoms.  This diagnosis-based approach may underestimate the burden of common symptoms such as dizziness and vertigo, which rank as the most frequent complaints in primary care but can remain unexplained in 40% to 80% of cases (Neuhauser HK).

Despite reports that as a consequence of vestibular deficits, children have poor gaze stability that affects reading, and impairments of motor development and balance, children and infants are not typically screened for vestibular deficits.  Consequently, vestibular dysfunction is an overlooked entity and intervention to ameliorate these impairments is not provided (Rhine,RM)

From 2001 through 2004, 35.4%, of US adults age 40 years and older (69 million Americans) had vestibular dysfunction (Agrawal, Carey, Della, Schubert, Minor).

The vestibular system is commonly described as the “inner ear” area of dysfunction.  Symptoms can range light headedness, spinning, blurred vision, unsteadiness, dizziness, Jumping vision, and nausea.  The symptoms can be mild or severe with little loss of function to very disabling.  Other systems also work in conjunction with this system and can be altered as well creating balance deficits, headaches, poor posture, sensitivity to light and noise, difficulty reading and writing in between lines and poor concentration, and motion sickness.

At CHC we have physical therapists trained to address all these different components of the vestibular system.