Dizziness and Vestibular Rehabilitation
Dizziness can be cause by many factors. These include disorders of vestibular system, brain or vision. Variable blood pressure and/or blood sugar levels can also make you feel dizzy. It's important that your neurological physiotherapist has the skills and experience to understand what's causing your dizziness and provide the appropriate treatment plan. These are post-graduate physiotherapy skills, meaning little is taught during initial physiotherapy training- so these skills are obtained through post-graduate courses and refined with lots of clinical experience.
Ashan Weerakkody completed and passed the internationally renowned 6-day Vestibular Competency Course. This is the pre-eminent vestibular course and is the most in-depth course available to learn the up-to-date physiotherapy management of vestibular conditions and other causes of dizziness. He has subsequently completed the 3-day Advances in Vestibular Rehabilitation Course which covers conditions and treatments of greater complexity. In addition to this, Ashan has undertaken significant post-graduate training in the management of persistent post-concussion symptoms.
This knowledge, coupled with extensive experience treating vertigo, complex dizziness and persistent concussion symptoms across the Perth region, means that at Cortex Neuro Rehab, we are skilled in managing a range of conditions that cause dizziness.
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Vestibular Rehabilitation
Your vestibular system is a small apparatus located in your inner ear and one of the major systems involved in balance.
Its main role is to detect movement of your head in relation to gravity- think lifting your head up, down, side to side- that's your vestibular system firing up! When it's not working well, your brain isn't getting the full picture of what movements are happening, and you can feel dizzy.
Being able to determine whether you have vestibular dysfunction, and how this relates to your dizziness is a key skill of an experienced neurological and vestibular physiotherapist. It's also really important that any rehab exercises you are given are done at the right level for you- otherwise you just feel dizzy and don't get better!
Through our extensive experience, we confidently provide a range of vestibular rehabilitation techniques, tailored specifically to your rehab needs.
BPPV
Who says you've got rocks in your head?!
BPPV is the most common form of dizziness and is the result small particles (crystals) being displaced into the fluid-filled semi-circular canals of your vestibular apparatus- creating changes in the simulation of your vestibular system and sending you into a spin (vertigo).
BPPV stands for Benign, Paroxysmal, Positional Vertigo. Essentially, it's intermittent dizziness (vertigo) that occurs during certain head positions. It can be successfully treated by vestibular physiotherapists.
A skilled vestibular physiotherapist can determine the correct canal in which the crystals are located, and the correct treatment to reduce or resolve your symptoms.
At Cortex Neuro Rehab, we have seen all types of BPPV and often provide expert consultation to physiotherapists across Perth in managing complex BPPV that are more difficult to treat.
Central Dizziness
Dizziness can also be caused by the brain, most commonly stroke in the posterior (back, lower) part of the brain.
It's important that if you are presenting with new dizziness, that you are screened for a central (brain) cause, prior to proceeding with physiotherapy treatment, which we do as a routine part of any assessment we do.
Often as neurological physiotherapists, we already know that there has been a central cause- such as stroke, and then we can confidently move on to treating the dizziness caused by your stroke.
Treatment of this form of dizziness involves a thorough assessment of your dizziness and understanding how it affects your function. Rehabilitation usually involves a range of strategies such as balance and mobility training, training coordination and gaze stabilisation exercises as indicated.
Falls and balance
While not specifically vestibular or stroke-related, no rehab program for managing dizziness or unsteadiness is complete without working on balance to prevent falls.
At Cortex Neuro Rehab, any rehabilitation program we provide will always factor in an assessment of your balance and consideration of falls risk.
