ENT Specialists Audiology

Contributed by Denise Arceneaux, MCD, CCC-A

Dizziness, imbalance, vertigo, crystals….what does it all mean?  Dizziness is one of the most common reasons patients see a doctor.  Dizziness will affect approximately 40% of the population at one time or another in their lifetime.  Why do people get dizzy?  There are many answers to that question.  The answers range from migraines, viruses, buildup of fluids in the inner ear, to tumors on the hearing nerve, and the list goes on.  It is not always a simple and straight forward reason why you get dizzy and diagnoses can often be challenging. 

 

A thorough history is necessary for your doctor to determine the cause of your dizziness in order to treat it.  Generally speaking, vertigo is described as a true sensation of spinning. Likely causes of vertigo are from the inner ear.  Feelings of imbalance and lightheadedness can often mean the symptoms are caused by something other than the inner ear.  A very common form of dizziness called BPPV (benign paroxysmal positional vertigo) is one reason nearly 20% of all dizzy patients see an Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) physician.  This form is dizziness is often referred to as free-floating crystals in the ear.  These particles are freely floating calcium carbonate particles that get dislodged into the wrong canal in the inner ear.  Balance specialists can easily put those crystals back in place with a simple maneuver in the office called an Epley Maneuver, or repositioning procedure.  It is important to correctly identify which canal is affected for the proper procedure to be performed.   

Sometimes the cause of dizziness is a little more complex and patients are sent to an ENTphysician, like the physicians at the Lone Peak Hearing and Balance Center in Draper, a part of ENT Specialists with offices in Salt Lake City, Cottonwood, and Tooele.  The ENTs at ENT Specialists are highly skilled physicians and surgeons trained to treat disorders of the ear, nose, throat, head, and neck.  The physicians work closely with audiologists on staff who are trained to assess hearing and balance problems and assist in the diagnoses of diseases of the ear that affect hearing and balance. 

At the Lone Peak Hearing and Balance Center in Draper, our specialists utilize state of the art balance equipment to assess hearing and balance problems.  If a patient comes to us for balance problems, they will often first be given a full diagnostic audiogram (hearing test) by an audiologist.  Our audiologists are also trained to provide a full balance assessment that test different aspects of the balance system.  Our physicians might order a videonystagmography (VNG) evaluation which is a video recording of the eyes to determine if the cause of your dizziness is coming from the central nervous system or one of the inner ears.  The test is quite in depth and can give the physician quite a bit of information regarding the likely cause of your dizziness. 

The specialists at Lone Peak Hearing and Balance/ENT Specialists also have the ability to test for a disorder called endolymphatic hydrops.  The test that is often ordered for that is called an electrocochleography, or EcochG.  This test assists the physician in the diagnosis of an inner ear disease that causes dizziness, called Menieres Disease.   

If your physician suspects another disorder to be the cause of your dizziness he might order a Vestibular Evoked Myogenic Potential, VEMP.  A VEMP is a nerve conduction test that looks at a muscle reflex in the neck and directly points to a disorder in another portion of the inner ear.  This is a relatively new test that is now available which many clinics are not doing.   

If you or your loved ones have been plagued with dizziness of some sort, you might want to call the physicians, physician’s assistant or audiologists at the Lone Peak Hearing and Balance Center or at any one of our Salt Lake offices.  Our physicians include, Dr. John Butler, Dr. Justin Gull, Dr. Josh Yorgason;  our physician assistant Kristin Hoopes, PA-C and our audiologists Denise Arceneaux, MCD, and Stacey Snow, AuD - doctoral candidate.  We are here to help you resolve your dizziness and are confident we can do that.