Taking the History from a Dizzy Patient: Why "What Do You Mean by Dizzy?" Should Not Be the First Question You Ask

Abstract

Introduction: Context: Traditional teaching instructs clinicians to classify dizziness as vestibular if the patient reports vertigo, cardiovascular if the patient reports presyncope, neurologic if the patient reports disequilibrium, and psychiatric or metabolic if the patient reports non-specific symptoms. It is unknown whether patients can describe their symptom quality well enough to be classified as one of the four “types” of dizziness.