What is Vestibular Rehabilitation?
Your balance system consists of three essential parts:
- Vision
- Inner ear (vestibular)
- Joints and muscles (somatosensory)
If one or more of these essential parts are impaired, you can experience dizziness and/or loss of balance. Vestibular rehabilitation addresses each of these systems to restore proper balance and eliminate dizziness.
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Symptoms of Vestibular Involvement
- Dizziness
- Unsteadiness or feeling of being off balance
- Vertigo (spinning sensations)
- Bouncing or jumping vision
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Who is Appropriate for Treatment?
People of all ages are appropriate for treatment.
Whether your symptoms are mild or severe, acute or chronic; therapy may reduce or eliminate causes of dizziness or imbalance. If relief from your symptoms is not possible, our skilled therapists will teach you compensation strategies and connect you with community resources to help adapt your life to your symptoms. Therapy can also help prevent falls as well as age-related balance problems. Even small, seemingly insignificant, problems such as an ear infection can lead to dizziness.
Treatment has progressed drastically in recent years providing relief to millions of people. Prior to 1993 most people were told nothing could be done for their dizziness. This is no longer the case Help is available!
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Treatment
An evaluation will be performed by highly trained therapists using sophisticated equipment to determine the possible cause.
Based on the diagnosis, each person will receive an individualized exercise program including a combination of eye exercises, balance training, strengthening, and habituation training (exercises designed for dizziness) if appropriate. Treatment may also consist of maneuvers to treat positional vertigo (dizziness), such as the canalith repositioning maneuver that has a 76% success rate with only one visit to eliminate vertigo (dizziness). Exercise may also be performed on a specialized piece of equipment called the Balance Master.
To receive treatment, you need a referral from your physician. Your physician may want to see you prior to referring you to therapy.
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Did You Know?
- Dizziness is the second most common complaint heard in the doctor’s office.
- Close to 1/2 of the population over the age of 65 fall each year.
- After age 70, there is a 40% loss of inner ear function leading to balance problems and dizziness.
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General Facts
- Many medications used to treat dizziness actually make symptoms worse.
- Falling and balance problems are not an inevitable part of aging.
- Concussions, neck injuries, and the use of vibratory tools are common causes of dizziness.
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