hey all,
Received letter from my consultant, following balance testing couple of weeks ago.
He is suggesting there is an abnormality involving the right inner ear. My blood tests were all normal apart from my ESR which was raised at 27mm/1hr. He says this suggests some form of inflammatory or infective process and merits further investigations.I have an app to seee him this coming monday. Any ideas as to what he is gonna do now? Could this indicate i dont have VM and have some kind of chronic infection deep in middle ear? how do they view the inner ear? Would it have to be a CT scan? any advice/help
maria
x

Hi Maria,

The can't really inside the inner ear as it's about the size of 5pence piece. Sometimes a doc will order a scan, but it's generally to rule out more serious (and more obvious) things, and it's rare anything would get shown up, and unless there is a history of pain, swelling etc then most wouldn't order a scan.

It sounds like the Caloric testing has shown some weakness in the right inner ear. Any virus or inflammation which caused it is likely to be long gone (the calorics will be permenatly lowered, but recovery is bought about by central compensation), unless there is current pain/swelling. The blood test abnormality could be unrelated to the vestibular dysfunction (a minor infection you fighting off for example), but it sounds like you doc is being very thorough, so is try to rule out any possible infectious or autoimmune cause.

BTW, 27 is not the high, and would be considered fairly normal in people over 50, and may be something as simple as anemia..

He may want to run some bloods, and repeat this test to see whether it was a blip.... Sounds like your doc is fairly on the ball though..

Hi just to add to Billy's post. I know your potential diagnosis is vestibular migraine. Showing a deficit in the right ear doesn't rule out this diagnosis. Another theory is that migraine can damage the inner ear - don't know the exact science on this - I think one of the theories is restricted blood flow to the ear. Some people with VM have positive caloric tests. So Migraine could still be your diagnosis.

I know it's different but they ran blood tests at some point with me. I showed a vitamin B2 deficiency. As Billy says, the two things could be completely unrelated as my B2 deficiency had nothing to do with my dizzy issues.

best,

Thanks to you both for respondng to my post. It reassuring to know that others have such helpful info and advice. Shall go to my app on monday and see what he has to suuggest. I will keep you posted. Regards,
Maria.x