Dizziness

Dizziness is an imprecise umbrella term that can refer to several distinct sensations, including a sense of spatial disorientation, vertigo, or lightheadedness, and it is an extremely common complaint, affecting an estimated twenty to thirty percent of the population at some point. Physicians generally sort it into four subtypes: vertigo, the sensation of spinning or of one's surroundings spinning, which accounts for roughly a quarter to half of cases and is often accompanied by nausea and vomiting; disequilibrium, a sense of impaired balance, in under about fifteen percent of cases; presyncope, or a feeling of impending faintness, in under about fifteen percent; and nonspecific dizziness, sometimes rooted in psychiatric causes, in about ten percent. Vertigo is therefore only one specific subtype of the broader dizziness category rather than a synonym for it, and unlike vertigo, disequilibrium typically does not bring on nausea or vomiting.