Introduction to dizziness and vertigo

You may have felt that dizzy feeling when you look down from a great height. For example, if you look down from the roof of a skyscraper, you end up feeling dizzy for a while. That momentary dizzy feeling is not necessarily “vertigo” as it is described in the medical world.

In this article we will present a basic differentiation between dizziness and vertigo.

Dizziness is a feeling of lightheadedness with or without loss of balance. They also feel dizzy when there is a drop in blood pressure. Dehydration is also one of the main causes of dizziness, and dizziness can definitely make people dizzy. There are forms of dizziness that pass without medical intervention. However, dizziness can also be a symptom of a more serious medical condition.

How about vertigo?

Ordinary people might think that vertigo is just dizziness, but in the medical profession it is a very specific type of dizziness. Vertigo is more than a feeling of being dizzy, it is a feeling that the world is spinning. It is also not similar to fear of heights or acrophobia. Rather, even if the environment is not moving at all, the person suffering from vertigo feels that the world is moving all the time. It is also different from a certain type of fainting or unbalanced feeling. The type of dizziness felt in vertigo is a form of spinning primarily due to a pathological condition of the vestibular system found within the inner ear.

There is a set of associated symptoms that characterize a state of vertigo. Some of these symptoms are tinnitus or ringing in the ears, hearing loss, vomiting and nausea. There are a couple of areas that can be problematic, resulting in the physical symptoms. If there is a disturbance in the labyrinth within the inner ear or in the auditory nerve pathways, vertigo may occur. These alterations can result from inflammation of the inner ear, inflammation of the vestibular nerve, and Ménière’s disease, among others. A certain type of vertigo caused by migraine is called central vertigo.

Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo or BPPV is worth mentioning here because it is a condition that is very manageable as soon as it is properly diagnosed. BPPV is seen more in older people than in younger people, and its incidence is higher in women than in men. Although there is no known cause, there are management approaches available that adequately address the issues.

BPPV is an idiopathic disease with no identifiable cause, but there are cases where BPPV is seen after head injury, ear surgery, labyrinthitis, vertebrobasilar ischemia (or reduced blood flow to that area of ​​the brain), and prolonged bed rest in bed. BPPV can also be seen as an associated symptom in syphilis, drug toxicity, otosclerosis, or a genetic problem in the ear that leads to deafness and Ramsay Hunt syndrome (viral infection).

For an effective treatment approach, it is important to determine the pathology or problem underlying the vertigo. Typical interventions include drugs such as anticholinergics, antihistamines, anticonvulsants, corticosteroids, and beta-blockers, and surgical measures.