Migraine-associated vertigo

Migraine-associated vertigo

KRISTER BRANTBERG, NATALIE TREES & ROBERT W. BALOH

“Conclusions. It is probably not wise to demand a temporal relationship between migraine symptoms and vertigo for the definition of migrainous vertigo. When recurrent vertigo attacks begin at an early age in a patient with normal hearing and migraine, there are few diagnoses other than migraine that need to be considered. Objective. The clinical association between migraine and vestibular symptoms, such as dizziness, motion intolerance and spontaneous attacks of vertigo, is well documented. Recently, investigators have attempted to develop diagnostic criteria for this association. We hypothesized that there are multiple migraine-associated vestibular syndromes and studied a more homogenous subset of them (benign recurrent vertigo). Material and methods. A structured interview was conducted over the telephone with 40 patients who presented to our neurotology clinic with benign recurrent vertigo and met the International Headache Society criteria for migraine. The structured interview was also conducted with 40 relatives of the patients who reported the same symptoms. Results. A marked female predominance was found. Most of the patients had vertigo attacks lasting minutes or hours and most were completely free of dizziness between attacks. Imbalance and nausea typically accompanied the vertigo. However, in half of the cases, vertigo occurred without an association with headache.”

mvertigo.org/articles/Migrai … ertigo.pdf

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Which seems only to go to show ‘Us Lot’ are very much in a minority. Bad news for the prospects of diagnosis bearing in mind my veterinary colleague who always said diagnosis is based on the principle ‘common things are common’. Still with new books, forums etc the word seems to be beginning to spread. Helen

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complete paper as the above link is broken

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Completely free between attacks. I wish.

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Yep, doesn’t that sound good. Those were the days my friend … as the song goes. I was always, with episodic MAV, for over a decade, completely free, as if it never existed. I’d have an horrific 72 hours attack of vertigo and all its accompaniments which would always start overnight/first thing in the morning on waking, suddenly Wham, then 72 hours later it would leave almost as quickly as it had arrived then I was fine, could stand on my head if I wanted to, no problem. All gone til the next time. I suspect if a canny doctor had picked up on it then and popped me a low dose of preventative I’d never have ended up with it going chronic at all. It stands to reason it must be easier to treat when it’s still at a stage it can, after 72 hours, reset itself every time so perfectly. The more I read the more amazed I become it was missed. The very timing ‘up to 72 hours’ is virtually diagnostic in itself together with the lack of headache! Helen

Add me to that wish list also Emily
Jo x

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