Special features of old age vertigo.
In daily clinical practice, it is seen that elderly patients complain most frequently of dizziness, tinnitus, and hearing loss. Listening to those complaints, do we not tend just to attribute them to age? Against this background, we review vertigo in elderly patients briefly and consider the key points of its treatment. In comparison to younger people, what is first noticeable about elderly people is that they have a lot of fat in the body and a markedly low level of intracellular water. In other words, elderly people are always at risk of dehydration and liable to enter a shock state. The dorsal root in the elderly is also degenerated, and this explains such diverse complaints as dizziness, tinnitus, ringing in the head, headache, neck and shoulder stiffness, and lumbago. However, these complaints cannot be dismissed simply as "an unidentified syndrome." Behind these complaints is invariably one or another organic disorder. This is the conclusion we have reached from our day-to-day clinical practice.
Sakata
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Center for Vertigo, Disequilibrium, and Tinnitus Diseases, Nishishinjuku 1-7-1, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan 160-0023.
Sakata
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D000368:Aged; D003681:Dehydration / Q000150:complications; D004244:Dizziness / Q000150:complications; D006261:Headache / Q000150:complications; D006801:Humans; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000150:complications; D014012:Tinnitus / Q000150:complications; D014717:Vertigo / Q000209:etiology* / Q000503:physiopathology*