The vestibular system is essential in enabling an animal to maintain balance, preventing the animal from falling over, and allowing it to keep and adapt the position of the eyes, head, and body with respect to gravity. It is therefore not surprising that disease of the vestibular system results in some of the most dramatic and distressing neurological signs. Head tilt, falling, rolling, leaning, circling, abnormal nystagmus, and ataxia commonly result. Clinical signs of vestibular disease may be a result of lesions involving either the receptor organs in the inner ear or the vestibular portion of the eighth cranial nerve (i.e., peripheral vestibular disease) or lesions involving the brain-stem vestibular nuclei or vestibular centers in the cerebellum (i.e., central vestibular disease). This session reviews the clinical approach to treating an animal with vestibular disorder.
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