What Is Balance and Vestibular Rehabilitation Therapy? Timothy C. Hain, MD, American Hearing Research Foundation Page 1 of 5

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This document discusses current ideas about physical therapy for dizziness and imbalance, also called vestibular rehabilitation, or more generally, balance rehabilitation. While there is some data regarding the efficacy vestibular rehabilitation (for example, Cowand et al, 1998), much remains to be done. Accordingly, this review is opinionated, based on 15 years of clinical experience of the author who is a specialist in the diagnosis and treatment of dizziness. The main message is that therapy is often worthwhile, but selection of the best type depends on both the diagnosis and health care situation. This page is primarily intended to be a reference for patients who have been referred for therapy.

What are the Indications for Therapy?

There are three clear indications for vestibular rehabilitation referrals:

• Specific interventions for benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV)
  • The Epley and Semont maneuvers 
  • The Brandt-Daroff exercises 
  • Log roll exercises (for lateral canal BPPV)
• General interventions for vestibular loss
  • Unilateral loss, such as for vestibular neuritis or acoustic neuroma
  • Bilateral loss, such as for gentamicin toxicity and related conditions
• Empirical treatment for common situations where the diagnosis is unclear
  • Post-traumatic vertigo
  • Multifactorial disequilibrium of the elderly

Individuals not likely to benefit from vestibular therapy include:

• Persons without a vestibular problem, for example
  • low blood pressure
  • medication reactions (other than ototoxicity)
  • anxiety, malingerers, depression (although T’ai Chi may be helpful for anxiety)
  • migraine associated vertigo (although it has been reported to be helpful nonetheless)
  • transient ischemic attacks (TIA)
• Persons with fluctuating vestibular problems
  • Meniere’s disease
  • perilymphatic fistula

There are some conditions where it is not entirely clear whether rehabilitation is helpful, but it seems likely at this writing that it is not.

• Mal de debarquement (MDD)
• cerebellar degenerations
• idiopathic motion intolerance

How Can the Success of Rehabilitation Be Measured?

Measuring success is more difficult than it sounds. There are several fallacies:

• Tincture of time: Most disorders have a tendency to get better on their own, so one possible fallacy is to attribute improvement to physical therapy, without controlling for passage of time.
• What is important? Most people limit their activities by their overall risk. As they feel more stable, they move around more. Measurement of falls or trips is related to activity and objective risk. Given that people want to increase their activity, they may keep their number of falls constant, as they improve.
• What is balance? There presently is no method of measuring “balance.” There are numerous methods of measuring things that are associated with balance.
• How do you separate psychological aspects (that is, fear of falling) from objective aspects (that is, risk of falling)?

Probably the most valid measures right now are subjective measures (questionnaires). Examples include the dizziness handicap inventory (DHI) and the activities-specific confidence scale (ABC). Nevertheless, these measures are greatly handicapped by their intrinsic variability, and tendency for people to scale their responses according to what they think they should be doing, rather than actual performance.

Other measures of “balance” include posturography, rotatory chair testing, ENG testing; and mobility oriented scales, such as the timed “get up and go” test, and the Berg balance scale.

A Medline search performed in February 2008 found numerous clinical reports supporting the use of vestibular rehabilitation therapy. A recent and very thourough review (Hillier, 2007) of 21 clinical trials found that vestibular rehabilitation resulted in significant improvement in patients with unilateral peripheral vestibular dysfunction. The exception to this finding was in patients with BPPV, who benefited more from specific interventions (described below) than from general vestibular rehabilitation therapy.

Several individual clinical trials also showed patients to benefit from vestibular rehabilitation, including both genetic and individualized interventions. Patients showed improvement both on subject questionnaires and on clinical vestibular testing (Enticott, 2008; Badaracco, 2007; Venosa, 2007; Meli, 2006; Nishino, 2005, Macias, 2005, Bittar, 2005, Badke, 2005; Yardley, 2004; Hansson, 2004; Dannenbaum, 2004; Cohen, 2004; Topuz, 2004; Bittar, 2002; Murray, 2001). Patients who experience anxiety or depression along with the vestibular symptoms may see improvement in their emotional state with vestibular rehabilitation (Meli, 2007).

Many patients, particularly older ones, have additional medical problems that contribute to the vestibular symptoms. Treatment of these other problems significantly affects their response to rehabilitation therapy (Moreira, 2007).

Children with peripheral vestibular disorders probably benefit from rehabilitation (Medeiros, 2005), although clinical trials with children are rare.

Specific Interventions

At this writing, only BPPV has specific rehabilitation interventions. This material is abstracted from our BPPV page.

How is BPPV Treated?

• Office Treatment
• Home Treatment (Brandt-Daroff Exercises)

Office Treatment of BPPV: The Epley and Semont Maneuvers

There are two treatments of BPPV that are usually performed in the doctor’s office. Both treatments are very effective, with roughly an 80% cure rate, according to a study by Herdman and others (1993). If your doctor is unfamiliar with these treatments, you can find a list of knowledgeable doctors from the Vestibular Disorders Association (VEDA).

From the American Hearing Research Foundation, 2008. Used with permission. www.american-hearing.org.

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