Cervical spondylosis: a cause of dizziness?

Vertigo is usually described as hallucination of movement or disorder of orientation in space. Cervical spondylosis is widely reported as one of the non-traumatic causes of dizziness and is often described as cervical vertigo.

Cervical spondylosis is a common condition, briefly described as osteroarthritis of the cervical spine. It arises as a result of age-related dryness of nucleus pulposus and its collapse, causing bulging of the annulus fibrosus. This causes increased mechanical stress at the cartilaginous end plates of the vertebral body lip, leading to osteophytic spurs, which helps to stabilise the hypermobile vertebrae as a result of loss of disc space.5,6 These osteophytes cause cord space narrowing. Age-related hypertrophy of the ligamentum flavum and thickening of bone may result in further narrowing of the cord space.5 Clinical presentation Cervical spondylosis affects around 10%

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