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Abstract
Interest in how children acquire balancing skills predated any attempt to diagnose disorders of balance in children. As soon as vestibular function tests were described, age related data were collected for infants and children, and the same applied to posture and gait. Vertigo was a recognized accompaniment of ear disease such as suppurative otitis media, but not specifically described in children. The first clinical description of vertigo in children was that of a paediatrician, Still, in 1924 (1). The vertigo described was what Basser (2) subsequently named benign paroxysmal vertigo of childhood. Paediatric neurologists Eviatar and Eviatar (3) described a number of vertiginous conditions and found epilepsy to be the most common cause. Vestibular dysfunction in association with congenital deafness was described by Arnvig (4) and was most probably Usher syndrome. Cyr (5) adapted vestibular testing that had been developed for adults so that reliable results could be obtained in children. Imbalance is now well recognized in children and vestibular function tests are used in both diagnosis and prognosis, notably for genetic disorders and those undergoing cochlear transplantation. Migraine is now known to be the commonest cause of vertigo in children.