Could My Tinnitus Have Affected My Hearing Test?

I’ll try to keep this as brief as possible. Finally went to an ENT doctor about my tinnitus. She checked me out and said everything looked fine (no damage to ear drums etc). I then saw an audiologist directly after to have a hearing test done and was told I have high frequency hearing loss (which would not surprise me considering I’ve been a musician for most of my life and was not good about wearing ear protection at shows).

My tinnitus comes and goes. Some days I have it all day and some days I don’t. The only thing I’ve been able to possibly link it to is lack of sleep. For example, if I wake up with tinnitus and go back to bed for a few more hours it will often go away completely for the rest of the day.

When I went to the doctor, my tinnitus was present and this leads me to two questions:

1) Is it possible that the ringing in my ear affected my performance during the hearing test? I.e. not being able to hear certain tones over my tinnitus’ frequency and possibly being misdiagnosed with hearing loss.

2) Does hearing loss induced tinnitus normally come and go? I would assume it would be a constant thing since, from what I understand, it’s the brain trying to “fill in the gaps” of frequencies you can’t “hear” anymore.

Really wish I saw the audiologist first so I could’ve asked the ENT these questions. Any info would be super helpful - thanks!

 

It certainly can. I had extremely different hearing tests because I went for one when I had a spike.

 

I really believe your tinnitus can impact your hearing test. I have a very difficult time taking these tests because all I can focus on is the tinnitus. I’ve had four angiograms this year. Two showed minor hearing loss in the left ear and then the third showed it surprisingly improved and was back to normal range. I was also on a course of steroids and my tinnitus just resolved in that ear after that x 4 months. Sadly, it’s coming back so I suspect I have had another shift in hearing in that ear.

So I have had four hearing tests this year and the results have varied appreciably. Most recently, I had a hearing test of my right ear only. All tests prior to that showed completely normal / excellent hearing in that ear. Then I developed a high pitched tinnitus in my right ear and I went and took an audiogram and at the higher frequencies I seem to have lost hearing. Still within normal range but a decrease none the less and I wonder how much of it was that I couldn’t hear the beeps over the stupid tinnitus. I had absolutely no noise trauma.

As you age, you are supposed to lose 1/2% of your hair cells per year. I can’t imagine I would’ve lost all that hearing naturally in the span of three months.