Diagnostic Vestibular Pocket Guide: Evaluation of Dizziness, Vertigo, and Imbalance- First Edition

Diagnostic Vestibular Pocket Guide: Evaluation of Dizziness, Vertigo, and Imbalance is a “lab coat pocket guide” for clinicians and students who evaluate patients with balance disorders. This quick reference condenses all facets of the clinical evaluation to provide guidance in a range of situations, including appointment preparation, vestibular screening measures, and appropriate objective testing. Specific chapters target common disorders and evaluation, required modifications based on age, forming clinical impressions, and medical referral criteria.

Key Features

• Succinct explanations of vestibular principles and test procedures
• Compact and portable design for frequent use
• Concise and approachable outline format for quick reference
• Tabs for each chapter, a list of common abbreviations, and index ensures easy access to during an appointment
• 80 figures and tables
• Appendix outlining key symptoms, signs, and management options for peripheral, central, and systemic conditions

Review

"As per the title, this is a paperback, easy reference, guide which, for once, will actually fit in many a pocket. It is ideally suited to a 'dipping in' or browsing approach, rather than reading from cover to cover at one sitting. The format, with boxed highlighted text, many an algorithm, table or line diagram and its clinical applicability does immediately appeal.

The content is conventional, with coverage of the basic sciences, clinical evaluation and the interpretation of the many objective tests of vestibular function now widely available, whether a rotatory chair or ice water in the ear canal! I would single out for praise the chapter on history taking (especially 'Building up Rapport and Setting up the Visit Agenda') or that on 'Basic' clinical examination in the office setting. These two chapters alone commend the book to any trainee in otology or neurology. You would expect, and sure enough get, coverage of the most sophisticated objective testing such as electronystagmography, the rotational chair, the video head impulse test and vestibular evoked myogenic potentials. The applicability, methodology and interpretation of each is described in an understandable fashion, and that is no easy feat. [...]

A particularly well thought out chapter emphasises how the entire clinical approach is modified according to the patient’s age, whether in childhood or advanced 'maturity'.

The book closes with an Appendix which tabulates the symptom characteristics, clinical signs, pathophysiology and management options for a series of disorders. It is notable that this is supported by a list of references almost exclusively post 2015. This is a well updated book throughout.

This is not the easiest subject to master, but this is a very good introduction and it is ideally suited to repeated reference by the novice."

—Liam M. Flood, FRCS, FRCSI, in Journal of Laryngology & Otology (January 2021)