Vestibular compensation and vestibular rehabilitation. Current concepts and new trends

Summary The aim of this review is to present the current knowledge of the mechanisms underlying the vestibular compensation and demonstrating how the vestibular rehabilitation is conducted to help the recovery of balance function. Vestibular rehabilitation is based on improving the natural phenomenon called vestibular compensation that occurs after acute vestibular disturbance or chronic and gradual misbalance. Central compensation implies three main mechanisms namely adaptation, substitution and habituation. The compensation, aided by the rehabilitation aimed to compensate and/or to correct the underused or misused of the visual, proprioceptive and vestibular inputs involved in the postural control. As the strategy of equilibration is not corrected, the patient is incompletely cured and remains with inappropriate balance control with its significance on the risk of fall and impact on quality of life. The vestibular rehabilitation helps to correct inappropriate strategy of equilibrium or to accelerate a good but slow compensation phenomenon. Nowadays, new tools are more and more employed for the diagnosis of vestibular deficit (that may include various sources of impairment), the assessment of postural deficit, the control of the appropriate strategy as well to facilitate the efficiency of the rehabilitation especially in elderly people.