What Does a Typical Vestibular Assessment Look Like?
Vestibular assessments are a specific type of physiotherapy assessment that focuses on assessing clients who are experiencing symptoms of dizziness, limited balance, difficulties with visual concentration, and/or neck pain. This may apply to anyone who has had a concussion, a history of head or neck injury, inner ear infections, or simply anyone who is experiencing these types of symptoms. If this sounds like you or someone you know, this is what you can expect from a typical vestibular assessment.
We will start by chatting about your symptoms. When did they start? How did they start? Is there anything that aggravates them? Anything that makes them better? Once we feel like we have reached a good understanding of what you are feeling, we will have a look at some objective measures. We typically start by looking at your neck. Your neck can play a huge role in your vestibular symptoms. We will look at the amount of range of motion you have with neck movements, the strength of some of the muscles in your neck, and check if you have any pain in your neck. Next, we will do some visual tests. Things like tracking an object moving left, right, up and down, and looking back and forth between two objects. We will also look at your balance. Are you able to stand still without swaying back and forth? How about standing on one leg? What about with your eyes closed? We will also take a look at your walking. Do you feel ok when you are sitting still, but feel dizzy when trying to walk? Our assessment will be specific to whatever symptoms you are feeling, and whatever activities throughout your day-to-day life make these symptoms worse.
Depending on your specific symptoms, we may also perform what is called the Dix Hallpike test. This involves quickly changing position from sitting to lying down, with your head slightly rotated to one side. This helps us to identify if your dizziness is being caused by your vestibular system.
Most importantly, our assessment will be specific to your symptoms and your goals. Depending on our findings we will come up with a treatment plan together to best suit you. This may include hands-on therapy, visual training, balance training, etc. We want you to get back to feeling your best as soon as possible! If you have any questions about vestibular assessments or want to know if a vestibular assessment would be right for you, don’t hesitate to contact us!