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Benign paroxysmal vertigo: symptoms
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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A clinical picture of benign paroxysmal positional vertigo is characterized by the presence of sudden vestibular vertigo (with a feeling of rotation of objects around the patient) when the position of the head and body changes. Most often, dizziness occurs in the morning after sleep or at night when you turn in the bed. Dizziness is characterized by high intensity and lasts no more than one minute. If the patient returned to the initial position at the time of dizziness, the dizziness stops faster. Also, provocative movements can be tilting the head back and tilting down, so most patients, experimentally determined this effect, try to make turns, lifts from the bed and head inclinations slowly and do not use the plane of the affected channel,
As a typical peripheral dizziness, an attack of benign paroxysmal positional vertigo may be accompanied by nausea and sometimes vomiting, especially if dizziness caused considerable anxiety and agitation in the patient, which is accompanied by its throwing with permanent changes in the position of the body and head, which in turn provokes regular seizures.
For benign paroxysmal positional vertigo is characterized by the presence of a specific positional nystagmus, which can be observed when there is an attack of positional vertigo. Its direction is due to the localization in a particular semicircular canal of freely moving statoconia to the peculiarities of the organization of the vestibulo-ocular reflex. The most commonly benign paroxysmal positional vertigo arises from the lesion of the posterior semicircular canal. Less often pathology is localized in the horizontal and anterior canals. There is a combined pathology of several semicircular canals in one or different ears of one patient.
Balance disorder is not an obligatory symptom of the disease and develops, as a rule, in patients with long-term benign paroxysmal positional dizziness or under the condition of other causes that indirectly worsen the balance.
Important for the clinical picture of benign paroxysmal positional vertigo is the complete absence of other neurological and otologic symptoms, as well as the absence of hearing changes in patients due to the development of this dizziness.
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