Help For Dizziness Caused By Inner Ear Crystals

Colorado Springs – Losing your hearing can be bad enough… but imagine losing your hearing and your balance. Both can result from problems with the inner ear. “Patients that have a hearing loss often have dizziness and vice versa so patients that come in with dizzy events will often have a hearing loss and we often look for diseases that tie the two together” says Colorado Springs Ear Associates otologist Doctor Joseph Hegarty.

Aging and noise exposure can lead to hearing loss, especially in the higher frequencies, which leads to poor clarity and understanding. One of the most common causes of dizziness is called positional vertigo. Dr. Hegarty says “its actually a floater or crystal that dislodges from the inner ear and when one moves their head in a certain provacative position patients will experience a significant sense of vertigo as though the room is moving or spinning around.” It, too, can be a result of aging, though other causes can be fluid in the ear or an inner ear infection.

Positional vertigo is surprisingly easy to diagnose and treat, says Hegarty. “We move the patient’s head in a certain position to generate and move a stone from one bad area to the area that its supposed to be in, and that’s curative in ninty-percent of patients. They walk out feeling cured of their dizziness.”

For more on this or other problems with the ear, go to the upper right hand side of this page and click on “Go To The Pro.” Look in the medical section for Colorado Springs Ear Associates.