Abstract
Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) is a common clinical disorder characterized by brief recurrent spells of vertigo often brought about by certain head position changes as may occur with looking up, turning over in bed, or straightening up after bending over. It is important to understand BPPV not only because it may avert expensive and often unnecessary testing, but also because treatment is rapid, easy, and effective in >90% of cases. The diagnosis of BPPV can be made based on the history and examination. Patients usually report episodes of spinning evoked by certain movements, such as lying back or getting out of bed, turning in bed, looking up, or straightening after bending over. At present, the generally accepted recurrence rate of BPPV after successful treatment is 40%50% at 5 years of average follow-up. There does appear to be a subset of individuals prone to multiple recurrences.
Copyright
Association for Helping Neurosurgical Sick People. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Derivative-Non Commercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit.
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This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License, which permits unrestricted reproduction and distribution, for non-commercial purposes only; and use and reproduction, but not distribution, of adapted material for non-commercial purposes only, provided the original work is properly cited.
