vestibular study of presbyataxia

ABSTRACT

Fifty cases of elderly patients from out patient were screened with the audiological, vestibular, and radiological protocol to analyse the cause of imbalance. Fifteen cases had history of vertigo, whereas 17 had postural and 18 non postural vertigo. Hearing loss was seen in 41 cases, 11 cases had normal caloric under Frenzel glasses, absent demonstrable spontaneous nystagmus with or without fixation; normal optokinetic and pursuit tests, 43 had abnormal positional tests and spinovestibular reflex studies. In addition there existed abnormal propioceptive optomoter functions. Head shake nystagmus were observed in 11 cases only. Pursuit tracking studies were normal except few interrupting saccades. In the present study spontaneous nystagmus was present in 2% of the cases, Positional nystagmus in 86% cases and caloric abnormality in 12% cases. Disorganization of saccadic eye movements and visio-optomotor responses seems to be perhaps due to the poor proprioceptive input. This contention could be further substantiated by the observation of poor stability of these patients on spinovestibular test