How to recognize “otoliths”?

  Patients with vertigo are often seen in outpatient clinics, usually when they get up and sit up in the morning or lie down at night, or when they turn over to one side in the middle of the night, they suddenly experience a violent spinning in the sky, which is often accompanied by nausea, vomiting and other symptoms. In severe cases, vertigo can be triggered even by the mere act of raising or lowering the head. Because of the suddenness of the event, in addition to the vertigo symptoms, it can also bring panic, confusion, fear to walk and turn the head, fear to sleep, etc., which seriously affects the life and study of patients. Many such cases are often misdiagnosed as “insufficient blood supply to the basilar artery”, “cervical spondylosis” or “Meniere’s disease”. In fact, if such symptoms occur, nine times out of ten, they are caused by ear problems, which are called “otoliths” and medically known as “benign paroxysmal positional vertigo”. The name of this disease may sound very strange, but in fact it is the most prevalent vertigo disease, but it is not well known. According to French data, about 34% of vertigo patients have benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, and according to a survey in the United States, about 50% of elderly people over 70 years old have had at least one episode of otoliths, which shows the high incidence of the disease.  So, what is “otolith”? What is “benign paroxysmal positional vertigo”? Originally, there is a tube in the inner ear of the human body called the otolithic apparatus, whose main function is to feel the stimulation of linear acceleration, cause the sensation of position and regulate body movement. There are two otolithic membranes inside the otolithic apparatus, and there are many tiny otoliths attached to them, just like a piece of cloth with many diamonds, which are used to regulate the movement of the otolithic membrane. When some factors cause the otoliths to fall off, they will float in the inner ear like dust, and when they float in a specific position, they may cause vertigo once the position changes. This is called “benign paroxysmal positional vertigo”.  The main symptoms of “benign paroxysmal positional vertigo” are: brief rotational vertigo that occurs when the patient’s head moves rapidly to a certain position. The most common complaints of patients are vertigo when sitting up in bed, lying down, turning from side to side in bed, bending over or looking up. It may be associated with the following factors or secondary to the following diseases: 1. Otolithosis: occurs when the otolithic membrane is dislodged into the semicircular canal and deposited during senile degenerative changes.  2. Trauma: Otoliths can be dislodged into the semicircular canal after cranial trauma or accelerated head movement.  3.Ear diseases: middle ear mastoid infections such as viral labyrinthitis, chronic suppurative otitis media, exolymphatic fistula, and Meniere’s disease in remission can lead to otolith dislodgement.  4. Insufficient blood supply to the inner ear: Insufficient blood supply to the inner ear due to arteriosclerosis and hypertension, which can lead to thinning of the colloid membrane of the capsule and dislodgement of the otolith into the semicircular canal.  The diagnosis of benign positional vertigo is mainly based on the positional nystagmus test such as Dix-Hallpiketest, where the doctor can determine the disease and the semicircular canal into which the otolith is dislodged based on the vertigo induced by the change of position and the rotational rotation of the patient’s eye. The main method of treatment is otolith repositioning. Based on the alignment of the semicircular canal, a set of cephalic rotation methods have been clinically designed to cure the disease by rotating the otolith out of the semicircular canal and dropping it back into the oval sac, such as the Epley maneuver and the Semon maneuver. Patients can be reset several times even if they relapse.