Can Facial Nerve Inflammation Cause Tinnitus?

[Nathalie]

Can facial nerve inflammation cause tinnitus? Should the tinnitus go away after the nerve heals? The facial nerve and chorda tympani run through the middle and inner ear, which would explain the tinnitus. I haven't had any noise trauma, all tests came back normal.

 

[stophiss]

Nathalie,
Do you know the name of the facial nerve you are referring to? Do you have a facial nerve injury? If so, what caused it and may I ask what kind of therapy you are going through to minimize it? Any meds?

 

[Nathalie]

Cranial nerve 7 aka the facial nerve. I don't know for sure, the doc said it was probably an inflammation caused by a virus/cold I experienced previously. I was told to take ibuprofen/aspirin for 7 days for the inflammation, however symptoms didn't get any better. I took 1000mg of aspirin for 5 days, 1500mg for one day and 2000mg for one day. During and 2 days after the aspirin I had no ear problems or tinnitus, basically no side effects, let alone ototoxicity. I didn't even consume toxic doses of aspirin. Then on October 25th I received ultrasound therapy for my facial nerve, after which I started to feel distorted sounds, feeling of fullness and cold sensation. This happend 1 hour after the ultrasound. 1 day later the tinnitus started. I know that ultrasound cannot damage the ear and all my hearing tests have come back normal, except for my sound tolerance threshold, that was quite low. Maybe the ultrasound irritated the nerve? The facial and chorda tympani run straight through the middle and inner ear. I don't know whether they can cause tinnitus. Right now no meds.

 

[stophiss]

Can you characterize your pain? Is it neuropathic, i.e. electric shock type of pain? Do you have facial tightness...does it affect motor aka facial muscles or is it purely sensory? Do you think you may have a form of trig neuralgia?

Sorry for the barrage of questions....I am curious because I have damage to my inferior alveolar nerve and therefore have numbness and electric shock pain to my chin and lip and even tip of tongue aggravated by motion. I am looking into therapies to kill the nerve on some level. I theorize that this nerve injury due to extracting an outlier molar relative to position of the nerve may have caused my tinnitus...or at least a contributing factor.

 

[Tweaker]

There could be a link between facial pain and tinnitus. At start of bad tinnitus I had atypical facial pain. Also had tmj. Anyway amitriptyline helped facial nerve pain after taking for 2 years. Face pain been gone for last four years, except occasional day or two. now but no improvement in tinnitus for me.