Assessment of Balance Disorders

Balance disorders are often difficult to diagnose and treat using traditional methods, the reason being that balance disorders do not represent a single disease, but rather reflect a combination of multiple disorders, Balance requires integration of interactive components of sensory (Vision, vestibular, proprioception) motor and central nervous systems. Hence diagnosing a balance problem requires knowledge of these individual components. Still many clinicians prefer a traditional approach to diagnose and treat balance disorders with specialized services to be focused on localizing and treating specific pathologies. Because a typical balance disorder associated with multiple causes cannot be isolated to a single pathology on accurate diagnosis, requires a combination of tests to assess individual components along with their integrative actions. Even a specific pathology may show variations in the functional performance because of the brain’s adaptive response. Hence it is essential for the diagnostic process to determine if imbalance involves misinterpretations of sensory cues. Testing summary systems individually may not reveal the problem.