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Systematic review of traditional Chinese medicine in treatment of dizziness
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Systematic review of traditional Chinese medicine in treatment of dizziness

Charlotte McMahon, Chris Zaslawski, Vanessa Vigar, Nicole Hannan, Sophia Gerontakos and Janet Schloss
Chinese herbal medicines, Vol.First online
22/08/2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chmed.2026.08.008
Appears in  Recent Faculty of Health Publications
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Published (Version of record) Open CC BY V4.0

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Abstract

Chinese herbal medicine Dizziness Randomised controlled trials Traditional Chinese medicine Vertigo
Dizziness is a chronic condition that can significantly impact an individual’s quality of life (QoL) and increase risk of falls. It is characterised by a sense of environmental motion and loss of balance. It has been proposed that Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) can be used to effectively treat dizziness. This systematic literature review aims to evaluate the effectiveness of CHM on symptoms of dizziness and QoL. PubMed, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online (MEDLINE), China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED) databases were searched between January 2010 to April 2025. Included studies were RCTs that assessed CHM for the treatment of dizziness. Non-RCTs, animal studies, in vitro studies, case reports and review articles were excluded. Primary outcome measures included overall treatment effectiveness, dizziness handicap inventory (DHI), total number of vertigo attacks, total number of days with vertigo attacks and severity of symptoms. A total of ten RCTs were included in this review, all studies used Chinese medicine diagnostic criteria and approached the treatment of dizziness from a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) aetiology. Control interventions differed between studies with some using a placebo while others used experimental and/or positive controls. Duration of treatment ranged from 10 days to 16 weeks. All studies individually found CHM to be clinically effective in the treatment of dizziness (60%–90%) with improvements in symptom severity and QoL. No meta-analysis was conducted due to the high heterogeneity among studies. Safety and tolerability of CHM was high, however adverse event reporting was absent or minimal, limiting the depth of safety analysis. CHM has the potential to be safe and effective long-term treatment option in the management of patients experiencing acute and chronic presentation of dizziness.

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