抄録
The non-acoustic part of the inner ear, the vestibular ganglion with its nerve and the vestibular nucleus are included in the vestibular system, which serve as sensory organs for static and kinetic stimuli, such as, gravity, linear and angular accelerations.
The vestibular inputs ascend into the oculomotor system and descend into the spinal cord. They go into the cerebellum and the autonomic system, too. These functional connections act under the control of the central regulating system and the vestibular efferents, which are summarized in Fig. I.
Pathological changes in those functional pathways may cause vertigo or dizziness subjectively and disturbance of equilibrium objectively in the case, though the subjective sensation and objective findings may vary on depending with the anatomy, the etiology and the onset of the disease. Anatomy of the disease which could cause vertigo or dizziness are shown in Fig. 2.
It will be necessary for the purpose of differential diagnosis of vertigenous diseases that neurotological examinations of the functions of the vestibular system, the oculomotor system, the automomic system and the spinal cord must be carried completely and thoroughly. It would be required, however, too much time and burden both a patient and a examiner heavily, when all sorts of those examination are applied in every patient non-systematically.
The results of recent progress on vestibular research have made us know how to select and how to simplify the examinations without missdiagnosis of diseases. Those routine examinations will be presented in this paper. The site of anatomy, of which function is detected by every test is shown in Fig. 3.
The author would expect that those routine examinations are useful in out-patient clinic and are utilized by every E. N. T. practitioner.
