Migraine-associated vertigo

Abstract

It is probably not wise to demand a temporal relationship between migraine symptoms and vertigo for the definition of migrainous vertigo. When recurrent vertigo attacks begin at an early age in a patient with normal hearing and migraine, there are few diagnoses other than migraine that need to be considered.The clinical association between migraine and vestibular symptoms, such as dizziness, motion intolerance and spontaneous attacks of vertigo, is well documented. Recently, investigators have attempted to develop diagnostic criteria for this association. We hypothesized that there are multiple migraine-associated vestibular syndromes and studied a more homogenous subset of them (benign recurrent vertigo).A structured interview was conducted over the telephone with 40 patients who presented to our neurotology clinic with benign recurrent vertigo and met the International Headache Society criteria for migraine. The structured interview was also conducted with 40 relatives of the patients who reported the same symptoms.A marked female predominance was found. Most of the patients had vertigo attacks lasting minutes or hours and most were completely free of dizziness between attacks. Imbalance and nausea typically accompanied the vertigo. However, in half of the cases, vertigo occurred without an association with headache.