TREATMENT OF RECURRENT VERTIGO (MENIERE'S SYNDROME) BY SUBTEMPORAL DESTRUCTION OF THE LABYRINTH

Abstract

The syndrome of chronic recurrent explosive attacks of vertigo so severe as to incapacitate the patient and render life miserable and ordinarily unrelievable by sedatives is one which is remembered with distress by all physicians who have encountered it. Its etiology is varied.^1a It may result from an acute or a chronic inflammation of the ear (chronic aural vertigo), from disease of the medulla, from fracture of the temporal bone and perhaps from a toxic condition. In many cases the cause is unknown, and these cases are often grouped together under the term Ménière's disease, although Ménière described the syndrome as arising from any one of a number of diseases. For therapeutic purposes, care should be taken to exclude from the classification all cases in which vertigo occurs during the course of an acute suppurative or irritative process in the ear, in which the symptom usually subsides with its cause,