The vestibular system maintains human balance and clear vision during exercise. Vestibular receptors are located in bilateral inner ears, including three semicircular canals, oval sac and balloon. Impaired vestibular function can lead to dizziness, nystagmus, abnormal posture and balance disorder. The main content of vestibular function examination is to quantitatively evaluate the sensory function of peripheral vestibule, the signal transmission of vestibular nerve and the adjustment ability of vestibular center by examining the eye movement, posture and balance ability, so as to help diagnose diseases and guide the rehabilitation of vestibular function.

Vestibular function examination mainly includes recording eye movements after visual stimulation, posture changes, nystagmus after cold and hot stimulation or body rotation, and balance ability test on the dynamic and static balance table.

Eye movement of visual stimulation mainly observes whether there is spontaneous nystagmus, saccade and the ability to track the target smoothly, and nystagmus after staring at the jumping target and rolling target. There is no special discomfort in this part of the examination, and whether there is central function damage and acute vestibular peripheral function damage is analyzed.

Observe nystagmus after body position change and cold and hot stimulation. Dizziness and nausea may appear during examination, but they disappear after stopping stimulation. The examination of changing body position can determine whether there is otolith detachment and central disease, and the hot and cold test is the most classic vestibular function examination item. By injecting cold and hot air or water into the external auditory canal and observing the symmetry and strength of nystagmus, the sensitivity of vestibular peripheral organs to low-frequency stimulation can be judged. Rotating stimulation at different speeds or shaking head test often has no special discomfort, which can judge the vestibular response ability after rotating stimulation at different frequencies. Different diseases have different frequencies of vestibular function damage.