can you print out some of the good articles posted on the site and give them to her to read? do you have a lot of trouble walking?
Ooh, makes me mad. I don’t think my GP believes its a real illness, despite a neurologists diagnosis.
If you are UK based, sign this petition!
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/35045
Jo
Give your GP some evidence-based articles on MAV which she can’t just rubbish saying don’t believe all the crap you read on the net!
mvertigo.org/articles/nation … es2012.pdf
This is one - look under evidence based articles for more!
Barb
Sherlock,
The only way to change the status quo is through education. Take this paper to your GP next time you visit and tell him/ her that the forum you refer to is supported by Johns Hopkins Otolaryngology and a handful of US specialists.
S
Hi all,
I firmly believe that the only way to get our GPs educated and ''on side" is to give them evidence-based material to read. None of the GPs (5) in my last medical centre knew what MAV was. My GP said he had seen many patients during his 35yrs in practice with either migraine or vertigo but never come across one with both! Doesn’t this ring alarm bells - I bet some of these patients had MAV & maybe some were helped if they also had a headache & were given preventatives. But there would have been others with just the ‘vertigo/dizzy’ symptoms who just spent a ‘dizzy life’ !! Last year he actually read the m.vertigo article published in ‘MedicineToday’ (a peer reviewed journal), and got quite excited when he realised these symptoms were what I’d been telling him about for a year!! And… he apologised to me for not being able to give me a diagnosis! I have been a patient of his for 25 years so know he is an excellent doctor.
Now I have moved house & have a new GP. I gave her a copy of Dr Granot’s report to my previous GP and asked whether she had any patients with MAV; she hadn’t. However, she has a special interest in Medical Education and has academic status as senior lecturer at Flinders University! I keep her ‘up to date’ with any relevant papers as I know a GP has to cover so many areas of expertise they can’t be specialists in everything!
So, I hope through these two GP’s the subject of Migrainous Vertigo might be getting ‘out there’ in South Australia!
Barb
Hi Barb,
That’s really great to know that you were able to produce change like that by simply handing over the article. Very powerful stuff. Had you just been you rambling on about some forum with nothing else to show, it would have likely been dismissed, but show them the evidence and BOOM, the whole story changes. That’s why I’m such a champion for promoting evidence/ science-based information. It gets real results and gains respect over time from the establishment – and we all benefit by getting well again and not wasting our time with ear candles or worse being told it’s Meniere’s followed by some invasive non-reversible procedure.
Note on the migraine and dizzy comments by your GP and not coming across a person with both:
The lifetime prevalence of migraine is 13-16% in the general population; the lifetime prevalence of vertigo is 7%. Taken together and using statistical calculations, the expected combination of both should bring a prevalence of 1.1% by chance alone. However, the reality is that the association is 3.3%; thus, migraineurs are 3.8 times more likely to suffer vertigo than those without migraine disease. In other words, the correlation is far greater than by chance. This is more evidence (epidemiological) that migraine causes vertigo (indeed induced vertigo can trigger a migraine attack too).
Scott 8)
Scott
Your calculations r too confusing for my MAV brain to get but whatever it is that u have written down I am sure its all correct. Now I know how u managed your PhD whilst u had this junk on top of ur head 
I feel real lucky that my GP is on the ball.
It means a lot that I trust her: her intelligence, her caring, her alertness and her openness to new information. It means that when one specialist says A and another says B, or seems to, I don’t have to scratch my head, or ask my sweetie to scratch with me, but I can put it to my GP and–without having her make any decision for me–get the input of someone honest and informed who’s dealt with a lot of people’s health. I had an apt with her this morning (mainly to learn the result of x-rays) and mentioned that I was reducing my Mg supplement because my bowels were turning to water. She commented that in her experience Mg supplements seems to help female migraneurs around menstruation but otherwise she hasn’t seen much for it. Has it seemed to help my MAV? Not so far. She suggested I cut it out altogether. From someone else I might have dismissed this, but coming from her? I’m trying the experiment she suggested rather than playing with reduced doses.
When I read about dismissive doctors, especially your GP, it makes my stomach lurch. It’s so helpful to feel like here’s someone who’s in your corner and clear-headed. I sure hope that happens for all of yez.
I went through hell going from one consultant to another over the years and as for the GPs, well I still have copies of their sarcastic comments in my medical notes!
Scott is right, print off the papers, take them in. When they dont know the answers, because they feel inadequate, they speak “down” to you.
I was waiting for a perscription the other day and a lady had come out of the surgery, I heard her talking to someone else (all our symptoms) saying the GP told her she had labrynthitus (same old, same old). I asked her one or two questions (I was convinced she had MAV). I said to her “if her dizziness didnt improve” to consider MAV.
She looked at me a bit stunned but I hope she takes it on board for the future.
Bad enough living with this we dont need to be treated like “nutters” at the same time.
Christine
Scott,
That’s a great article…I didn’t see that one when I was doing my lit review for my paper on VM. I spoke with a doc at JHH and he agrees that primary care providers (or GPs) need more education and don’t understand VM exists or even how to diagnose it. The more publications that we can get out there focusing on this will hopefully help others in the future. It’s very unfortunate though that the IHS doesnt accept VM as a distinct diagnostic entity. …I am supposed to be speaking with this doc so I can find out specifically how he diagnoses VM and how we can help PCP/GPs recognize this in practice.