Visual and Postural Motion-Evoked Dizziness Symptoms Are Predominant in Vestibular Migraine Patients

Vestibular migraine (VM) is one of the most common underdiagnosed disorders. We aimed to study the clinical characteristics of VM patients who were referred to a neurology-headache unit by otolaryngology after exclusion of peripheral causes of vertigo.

One hundred and one patients diagnosed with VM in the headache unit were included. Description of vestibular symptoms, demographic and clinical features, trigger factors, accompanying diseases, and response to vestibular-suppressant medications and prophylactic migraine treatment were evaluated.

Vestibular symptoms were triggered by daily head and body movements and mainly consisted of brief attacks lasting seconds (60.4% of patients) although the total duration of the vestibular episode lasted hours or days. Other aggravating factors were moving visual stimuli, passive motion, and visually busy environments. Visually induced vestibular symptoms were defined by 71.3% of the patients, and positional motion-induced vestibular symptoms were described by 82.2% of the patients. Vestibular symptoms were mainly defined as feeling the ground slipping from under their feet (40.6%), feeling like there is an earthquake or swaying (27.7%), sensation of rocking on a boat (26.7%), and sensation as if stepping on empty space (24.8%). The majority of the patients (83.2%) previously used vestibular-suppressant drugs, and these drugs were effective temporarily only in 12.9%.

Chronic recurrent dizziness symptoms, rather than internal or external vertigo, are predominant in our VM patients. Recurrent brief dizziness attacks induced upon routine visual and/or postural motion, longstanding symptoms with limited response to vestibular suppressants, and precipitation by typical migraine triggers are suggestive of VM.