Vestibular Rehabilitation for Dizziness

The most common cause of dizziness and vertigo is peripheral vestibular disease including peripheral vestibular hypofunction, Meniere disease, and benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, also known as BPPV (van Vugt et al., 2017).

Physical Therapists play a major role in the prescription of exercise for treatment of dizziness and vertigo conditions. This specific exercise approach is known as Vestibular Rehabilitation.

According to a recent Cochrane review, there is moderate-to-strong evidence that vestibular rehabilitation is a safe and effective treatment for peripheral vestibular disease (McDonnell and Hillier, 2015).  Therefore, vestibular rehabilitation is likely to help your dizziness and vertigo, postural control, and overall quality of life.

What is Vestibular Rehabilitation?

Vestibular Rehabilitation consists of eye, head, and body movements to promote recovery and compensation. It can also included canalith repositioning manuevers, which are known to the general public as the techniques to help with your inner ear “crystals”.

The goal of these exercises is to reduce dizziness and imbalance and improve quality of life.

Is Vestibular Rehabilitation safe?

Vestibular Rehabilitation is a beneficial and safe intervention for patients. With all of the side effects of medication, we would recommend an initial treatment of Vestibular Rehabilitation prior to medications for most conditions of dizziness. Vestibular Rehabilitation has been reported to have a positive effect (Kim, 2007; McDonnell and Hillier, 2015) where medication has limited effectiveness, and repeated treatment with the drug is known to interfere with vestibular function recovery.

Who can perform Vestibular Rehabilitation?

Physical Therapists are typically the medical clinicians who are capable of providing a graded Vestibular Rehabilitation program.

Someone with additional training and expertise in this field is optimal to help you.

What makes Vestibular Rehabilitation at PhysioFit of North Carolina unique?

Our Vestibular Physical Therapy Specialist, Dr. Danielle Vaughan, has enhanced her capabilities of addressing your symptoms through professional education (neurological and orthopedic physiotherapy courses, about 120–350 hr) to become an expert in this fields after graduation.

She even teaches other professionals nationally and internationally on concepts related to Vestibular therapy associated with Cervicogenic Dizziness.

We offer 30 and 60 minute appointments that are dedicated to just you (not multiple patients at once) using technology to determine, she is able to accurately diagnose which (1 or multiple) canals are involved, manual therapy to the neck and initiate a Vestibular Rehabilitation program, if necessary.

If you are looking for a physical therapist who specializes in Vestibular Rehabilitation to help with your symptoms, feel free to contact us or sign up for an appointment to start your recovery