David Newman-Toker, MD, PhD, director of JHU’s Division of Neuro-Visual and Vestibular Disorders and a BIOS faculty member, was awarded the David Robinson Professorship in Vestibular Neurology. With this research-focused professorship, Newman-Toker plans to continue developing his tech-driven system to help diagnose dizzy patients. Dizziness can be deceptively benign, as it can be a symptom of a minor inner-ear disorder or something more dangerous, like a stroke.
The system, part of the Tele-Dizzy clinical program, uses high-tech goggles to track and record a dizzy patient’s eye and head movements. These stroke goggles allow a remote specialist to step in and assist frontline providers in an emergency department. Newman-Toker is dedicated to helping ED doctors distinguish between benign and serious causes of dizziness to better help patients. According to Newman-Toker, 40% of strokes that initially manifest as dizziness or vertigo go undiagnosed, which can be deadly. The stroke goggles would help to decrease that number and to direct more patients to the care they need.
Eye and head movements recorded by the stroke goggles are assessed by remote vestibular neurologists. Examining the movements, these vestibular neurologists find indications of lesions by spotting abnormalities in how patients track objects and how they fix their gazes. The neurologists use their expertise to quickly and effectively work toward identifying the cause of dizziness. According to Newman-Toker, bedside eye-movement tests are better at distinguishing between inner-ear disorders and strokes than the standard MRI assessment.
Newman-Toker hopes to use the tracking of eye movements to diagnose patients with other neurological conditions like Parkinson disease and Alzheimer disease. He wants to see this process for catching dizzy strokes used to diagnose patients with a wide range of conditions.