Vestibular Rehabilitation
Having problems with balance and dizziness can interfere with even the simplest tasks. These issues often happen because of problems in your vestibular system — structures in the ear and brain that help you maintain balance.
Our team at Atrium Health Carolinas Rehabilitation has the training, experience and resources to help people who have dizziness, vertigo and imbalance because of vestibular problems. They will teach you exercises to help you manage or overcome your symptoms so you can get back to the activities you enjoy.
Patient Care – What to Expect
Dizziness and vertigo can be caused by everything from low blood pressure to a stroke. This means problems in the vestibular system can be hard to diagnose and are sometimes mistaken for other conditions. Because our team specializes in treating vestibular problems, we know exactly what to look for and how to choose the right treatment for you.
Here’s why patients choose us:
- Expertise: Our team includes physical therapists with specialist certifications in neurology who have specialized training in vestibular disorders. Our knowledge of these systems and how they work together to provide your sense of balance helps us diagnose and treat your condition with precision and confidence.
- Innovative care: We are one of the only providers in the Charlotte area with a posturography machine to help us diagnose conditions. This machine provides a detailed way to analyze your vestibular system and other systems that affect your balance. Our therapists use it to pinpoint problems that can otherwise be very hard to detect.
What We Treat
Problems in your vestibular system disrupt your sense of balance, giving you symptoms like dizziness, vertigo and swirling vision. These problems can develop for many reasons, including injury and infection.
We treat vestibular issues resulting from events such as:
- Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV)
- Concussions
- Meniere’s disease
- Recovering from surgery after having an inner ear tumor
- Traumatic brain injury
- Vestibular neuritis and labyrinthitis
Vestibular Rehabilitation Treatments
We offer a range of techniques and exercises to help you overcome your condition. We’ll also help you understand what’s causing your symptoms and how therapy will help.
Our therapies include:
- Balance and gait training: We can guide you through exercises that help build steadiness and control on your feet. We base these exercises on activities you have difficulty with, such as walking on uneven ground, or maintaining balance in noisy or busy environments.
- Gaze stabilization: These exercises help prevent dizziness and blurred vision by practicing how you focus your eyes. We’ll help you focus on a target while moving your head, watch a moving target while you stay still, and master other visual skills.
- Habituation and desensitization: This is a process of gradually getting used to certain movements that make you dizzy, such as turning your head quickly or moving from lying down to sitting up. Our therapists can help you safely practice these movements, starting small and slowly building until you can do them without having symptoms.
- Particle repositioning maneuvers: For patients with BPPV, we can do specific maneuvers to return the loose calcium particles to their proper place in your ear and get rid of your vertigo.