Newport-Mesa Audiology Balance & Ear Institute (the Institute) announced it will present, “Coming Full Circle: Evaluation and Treatment of the Dizzy Patient” at the American Academy of Audiology’s (AAA) 2019 Conference in Columbus on March 30th at 10:30 am.
Dr Stacie Pilgrim, director of clinical research, is the lead presenter, and other supporting presenters will be Dr Jennifer Grace, clinical director and Dr Howard Mango, Founder and CEO. Co-presenting will be Jaime Carmody, owner of Midwest Dizziness and Balance Institute (MDBI). Carmody will discuss clinical findings from her patients’ diagnosis and treatment, comparing success rates from conventional therapy and the Institute’s proprietary Advanced Vestibular Treatment™ (AVT).
The Institute’s presentation will explain its approach to diagnosing and treating dizzy patients. The clinicians will outline how they perform comprehensive balance evaluations and various methods of vestibular rehabilitation, including the use of virtual reality, in an audiology setting. They will also discuss outcome statistics following treatment and share case studies.
“We look forward to demonstrating our Institute’s approach to the treatment of the dizzy patient,” said Grace. “As a research and data-driven practice, we will outline how our treatments use both subjective and objective data collected throughout the course of treatment to guide patients’ therapy.”
Learning Objectives:
- Identify the important steps to a comprehensive vestibular evaluation and understand the importance for determining differential diagnosis and development of a treatment plan.
- Evaluate the modern vestibular rehabilitation theories and techniques that are available to audiologists.
- Define the results of subjective and objective outcome measures following a course of vestibular rehabilitation therapy performed by audiologists.
According to the Institute, dizziness is one of the most common complaints in a primary care physician’s office, next to pain and fatigue. Vestibular dysfunction is the leading cause of dizziness, therefore, the practitioners believe it falls within the scope of an audiologist’s practice to diagnose and treat the dizzy patient, as they specialize in the inner ear, where the vestibular system lies. Research indicates that audiologists believe that a simple vestibular screening, such as a fall assessment, is within scope of practice, however, only a small percentage reportedly feel as though they have the knowledge and skills to provide this assessment, according to the Institute’s announcement. The Institute’s clinicians hypothesize that a very similar statistic would be found for views of audiologists on conventional therapy such as vestibular rehabilitation.
Vestibular rehabilitation therapy (VRT) is most commonly referred out to physical therapists. However, the Institute believes that audiologists possess the knowledge and that it falls within the scope of practice of vestibular anatomy and physiology, the skillset needed to provide appropriate treatment as well as access to the equipment necessary to provide treatment independently.
“It benefits patients to be able to visit an audiologist to both diagnose and treat their dizziness,” said Mango. “The traditional method of patients visiting multiple specialists and doing exercises at physical therapy not only costs them a lot of time and money, but it’s often completely ineffective in treating the vestibular dysfunction.”
Source: Newport-Mesa Audiology Balance & Ear Institute (the Institute)
