Background: Vertigo (Dizziness, giddiness, Imbalance, light-headedness, oscillopsia, spinning of head) is the most distressing symptom experienced by the patients and frequently present themselves in many specialty clinics like cardiology, neurology, general medicine, geriatric and ENT and these individual specialties have different strategies for evaluating vertigo in a particular pattern of their expertise.

But due to varied etiologies, it is not easily diagnosed and often patient are referred to different specialties and being subjected to expensive and inappropriate investigations. Such an approach leads to an unsatisfied patient who waits for months to get an appropriate diagnosis of vertigo.

Therefore, there is a need to take a careful, dedicated and committed history as well as thorough clinical examination to establish the cause for giddiness.

Aims and Objective: To evaluate all cases presenting to OPD with giddiness & to know the peripheral, central and other causes of vertigo.

Material and Methods: This study included 50 patients who presented with primary complaints of vertigo or dizziness.

All patients were subjected to careful history taking and thorough clinical examination was done.

Results: Of the 50 patients presenting to OPD, a peripheral cause was seen in 25 patients. 19 patients were diagnosed with Benign positional paroxysmal vertigo (BPPV), whereas 06 patients showed a central lesion of the vestibular system.

Conclusion: Careful history taking and thorough clinical assessment of patients is required for reasonable evaluation of vertigo. Though vestibular causes are important, it is essential to have a broad view of the various causes of vertigo so that serious and life threatening central causes are not missed out  & should be kept in mind while evaluation.

Keywords: Giddiness, Peripheral vertigo, Central Vertigo.

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Dr Ramchandra

Department of ENT, M. R. Medical College, Kalaburagi, Karnataka, India