Vertogo and throwing up from dizziness

[Alfred Lam]

Good day everyone, I am new to this forum and I am not sure  whether I am doing it right.

I had my CI activated at the end of Febrjuary, so it is getting close to 6 months.

Recently I experienced episodes of dizziness, resulting in throwing up . It is not too frequent but enough to feel worrisome and annoying (a month or so apart).

I asked my surgeon who stated that it has nothing to do with CI. I then did a full series of blood works and all my results came back within the normal range.

Than I also read that a fairly high % of CI has experienced vertigo and vomiting as well. But most get over it within a month or a few months after the implant. It is closing to 6 months for me. Is it normal?

Can anyone give this issue some thought and comment?

It will be much appreciated.

Alfred Lam

[Serena Metzler]

16 hours ago, Alfred Lam said:

Good day everyone, I am new to this forum and I am not sure  whether I am doing it right.

I had my CI activated at the end of Febrjuary, so it is getting close to 6 months.

Recently I experienced episodes of dizziness, resulting in throwing up . It is not too frequent but enough to feel worrisome and annoying (a month or so apart).

I asked my surgeon who stated that it has nothing to do with CI. I then did a full series of blood works and all my results came back within the normal range.

Than I also read that a fairly high % of CI has experienced vertigo and vomiting as well. But most get over it within a month or a few months after the implant. It is closing to 6 months for me. Is it normal?

Can anyone give this issue some thought and comment?

It will be much appreciated.

Alfred Lam

No I fist had my cochlear implant devices done and I experienced one time and I hope this goes away sooner 

[Tim]

@Alfred Lam Sorry to hear about that but I've been in the same boat and will share my experience in case it is helpful.

I had three episodes that sounded like yours each about a month apart. Sudden onset of extreme vertigo - unable to walk down a hallway without holding the walls for balance.  Then hours of feeling like I was suffering from food poisoning again - (I'll spare people other descriptions, just felt much worse and more prolonged than stomach flu.) Episodes were about April, May, and June after having had surgery and activation in January.  Nothing since then.

The original suspicion (from Audiologist, surgeon's PA, and Hearpeers community) was it might be BPPV-Benign Paroxymal Positional Vertigo from having small crystals dislodged in the inner ear.

I had a lot of good advice but my symptoms didn't quite match BPPV.  Also had a post-op CT scan that served dual purposes, checking for possible causes of the vertigo and for Anatomy-Based-Fitting (ABF). (ABF discussed elsewhere with excruciating technical detail.)  The CT didn't show anything related to vestibular problems and I got a referral for PT specializing in balance issues.

I just had a PT appointment for vertigo this afternoon and they did an hour of testing that found no evidence of it being BPPV.  Could have been still been BPPV but now seems unlikely since I passed all those tests with flying colors.

The therapist then had me do another kind of test.  Standing up with feet together and arms held close.  My balance was good with eyes open and good touch contact for floor.  Closing my eyes and standing on foam pad, balance was hard and I "failed" that test.  That led to suspecting Vestibular Hypofunction.  She gave me some exercises and will follow up next week.

My therapist will check on some research.  She was not aware of any research specifically associating Vestibular Hypofunction with cochlear implant surgery but will ask some colleagues and do some searching.  I did a quick google scholar search and found this review article.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Santosh-Swain/publication/358221023_Vertigo_following_cochlear_implantation_a_review/links/61f627224393577abefc63dd/Vertigo-following-cochlear-implantation-a-review.pdf

 

[Alfred Lam]

On 8/21/2023 at 4:15 AM, Serena Metzler said:

No I fist had my cochlear implant devices done and I experienced one time and I hope this goes away sooner 

Hi Tim,

Thank you so much for your insight and the various tests detailing your actions taken so far. They are much appreciated.

I will be seeing my audiologist this week and I will see what she would recommend. Apparently CI receipients do experience some sort of dizziness and it tends to go away with time. My query is, will it suddenly re-appear without any prior symptoms? Or is there anything we can do on our part?

Once again, Tim thank you.

Alfred

[Tim]

Some dizzyness seems to not be uncommon but mine was more extreme than the usual. 

My Physician Assistant (to the CI surgeon) and Audiologist both said balance issues was outside of their area of primary expertise.  I sat on the PT referral for about a month, waiting on the CT and life craziness before following up on it.  Should have probably done it earlier.

Maybe yesterday's PT was so intense that I was off for the rest of the day or maybe I'm just more sensitized to the issue but now I can tell that I have a little bit of a balance issue in everyday life.  Something else for me to work on in rehab.

I had three distinct extreme episodes but have now gone two months without another episode.  Maybe the intense episodes are done and I'll just have a lighter continuous level balance issue to deal with for a while.

[dkritter]

I've developed balance issues well before any hearing loss. As Tim said, there were times I needed  the wall for support just to get downstairs.

That was the beginning, then a year or so later I had a few full blown vertigo episodes where it seemed someone conked me on the head and the world began to spin.  These would last anywhere from 1 to 20 minutes but no nausea.

Moving forward about six months lost 60% hearing in right ear. Fairly classic Meniere's symptoms except the episodes were too short, the hearing loss didn't mimic typical Meniere's and no nausea. We decided on Vestibular Migraines as the closest fit to my symptoms.  Fast forward one year, lost all my hearing on the left in a three hour window.

8 months later (2019) my first implant. One vertigo episode after that. Lost hearing in 2023 and second side done - no vertigo. 

I still do get brain fog as well as a frequent sense of unbalance (keeps me from buying another sailboat)

I feel for you, I don't know what you have but I do know it took me a couple years to be able to hop in the car and drive more than an hour. Always was looking for so called escape routes incase it blew up into vertigo.

I have done all the vestibular exercises reliably and I truly believe they work at retraining the brain at least in my case.

Good luck

 

 

 

 

[Tim]

@dkritter  Thanks for the info.  You've had it harder than me. 

I'm lucky that my ongoing slight balance issues seems very minor.  As long as my eyes are open, it is fine and feels close to 100% of normal.  With eyes closed, maybe 80-90%.  Generally little risk of falling even with eyes closed or walking around in the dark of night. 

My three episodes were the only time that I felt any real risk of falling - my balance dropped to about 0%, even with eyes wide open.  The nausea lasted at least 3 hours each time (not sure how long balance/spinning also lasted since I did not feel at all comfortable testing it.) BPPV positioning exercises did not alleviate symptoms but I might have been doing them wrong.

I played a lot of backyard hockey as a kid and afterwards have always felt like I had excellent balance, perhaps from the many  hours of ice time.  That balance is no longer the case but it is still good enough to allow me to do all my regular activities (driving, neighborhood walks, playing tennis & pickle ball, etc) without feeling any sense of risk. I probably wouldn't try sailing myself though! 

I'll be doing the exercises though to help see if that improves things or arrests any further decline.

[Lauren]

Welp, had my first bout of really bad dizziness this morning. Dizziness has been manageably intermittent since plateauing out of vestibular therapy several months ago. Occasionally the room will spin when sitting down but it’s always after activity so I just chalk it up to suddenly being seated. 

But today walking into work I made it half-way from my car to the building and everything just spun out. I thought for sure I’d go splat. I segued into a stop as best I could, but did turn about 45 degrees. At least I didn’t fall though! Guess it’s a sign to dust off the vestibular therapy exercises again.

[Mary Beth]

Bummer @Lauren

[Tim]

@Lauren  Sorry to hear about the vertigo coming back.

I got a blue foam mat that I'm keeping in the corner of a room so I can try to do my balance exercise daily.  Can also help assess if balance begins regressing again.

Good luck! 

[Kim W]

Does your vertigo and nausea coincide with when they redo your mapping?  I find I get dizziness after each remapping appointment. Doctor says that is normal for Menieres patients.