Title: What Do You Mean By Dizzy?<br/>Author: WanTsu Wendy Chang<br/><a href='http://umem.org/profiles/faculty/1322/'>[Click to email author]</a><hr/><p>
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<strong><span style="font-size:14px;">What Do You Mean By Dizzy?</span></strong></p>
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<span style="font-size:14px;">Patients with dizziness account for 3% of ED visits.</span></li>
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<span style="font-size:14px;">The traditional approach based on symptom quality (i.e. “What do you mean by dizzy”) is not reliable.</span></li>
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<span style="font-size:14px;">Drs. Edlow and Newman-Toker propose a new paradigm based on the timing and triggers of dizziness.</span></li>
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<u><b style="font-size: 14px;">Acute vestibular syndrome</b></u><span style="font-size: 14px;"> begins abruptly or rapidly and continues for days. Patients’ dizziness may be exacerbated by movement but is not triggered by movement.</span></li>
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<u><b style="font-size: 14px;">Triggered episodic vestibular syndrome</b></u><span style="font-size: 14px;"> are repetitive episodes of dizziness triggered by some event. Patients will be completed asymptomatic at rest and will develop dizziness that is reliably triggered by a specific event or postural shift.</span></li>
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<u><b style="font-size: 14px;">Spontaneous episodic vestibular syndrome</b></u><span style="font-size: 14px;"> are multiple episodes of dizziness that occur without any clear identifiable trigger. Patients are asymptomatic between episodes.</span></li>
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<span style="font-size:14px;"><strong>Table 1</strong> shows common benign and serious causes of these vestibular syndromes.</span></p>
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<img data-en-img-selected="true" src="cid:0ac0a6a60de0128fed758bbef704dc83" style="height: auto;font-family:'Helvetica Neue';font-size:14px;" /></p>
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<span style="font-size:14px;">Utilizing the HINTS battery or the Dix-Hallpike maneuver, a “safe to go” algorithm for acute vestibular syndrome and triggered episodic vestibular syndrome is outlined in <strong>Figure 2</strong>.</span></p>
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<img data-en-img-selected="true" src="cid:82a535833034fdb64a87b542a4b958d6" style="height: auto; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px;" /></p>
<fieldset><legend>References</legend>
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Edlow JA, Newman-Toker D. Using the physical examination to diagnose patients with acute dizziness and vertigo. J Emerg Med. 2016;50(4):617-28.</li>
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Kattah JC, Talkad AV, Wang DZ, Hsieh YH, Newman-Toker DE. HINTS to diagnose stroke in the acute vestibular syndrome: three-step bedside oculomotor examination more sensitive than early MRI diffusion-weighted imaging. Stroke. 2009;40(11):3504-10.</li>
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<strong>Follow me on Twitter @EM_NCC</strong></p>
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