Diagnosed with Severe Sudden Hearing Loss 3 Days Ago. Already Getting Better. Stay Positive Folks.

Cliffs. This happened in China. I'm a US expat there.

Experienced sudden hearing loss/tinnitus/hissing in my left ear while sitting in front of computer 2/15/2016
Went to ENT 2/16/2016, doctor said it was impacted earwax and gave me sodium bicarbonate drops
Returned on 2/19 for a recheck, ears were clear and hearing loss was still present
Underwent audiology tests, results showed 30-45 db hearing loss across the 2000-8000 spectrum
ENT doctor declared it a medical emergency and sent me to ER for an IV drip of Vincopetine and saline solution.
Prescribed Prednisone 60 mg per day for 5 days with a 7 day taper following
8 hours of sleep with bedtime not past midnight.

I'm on Day 3 of this treatment and it's already getting better. Sounds are coming back. I feel a tingling "cool" sensation in my left ear and the tinnitus has subsided. Distortion of high frequency sounds is vastly improved. I would say I'm 40-50% better since the initial episode. Still have a while to go but will keep you guys updated.

BESIDES what the doctor told me to do this is what I have done as a supplementary type of therapy on the side

2 days of LOW LEVEL LASER at 650 hz broad spectrum over the left side of my head. ( i basically used an igrow and blasted it on the affected side) 20 min each day since 2/20, 2/21
Eating tons of Spinach and Morning Glory for magnesium. about 100 grams each on 2/20, 2/21
Ginkgo Biloba Supplement 120 mg 2/21, 2/22
528 hz + 852 hz new age sound therapy 2/21 before I went to bed

2/21 feeling of fullness disappeared but no real hearing gains.

now it is noon time 2/22 and I have recovered some hearing. I use a finger rub test to see if I can hear the sounds of my fingers rubbing together. when I woke up this morning I can hear the sound of my fingers rubbing in my left ear. Some return of fullness in the ear, but nowhere as drastic as the initial episode.

I am hopeful I can regain my hearing.

 

my advice is.. if you have sudden hearing loss get to the ENT right away and tell them you have sudden hearing loss and get on the steroid regimen ASAP.

in the US it would take a long time to get to an ENT .. in China I was able to see an ENT specialist right away and he diagnosed me within an hour after an audiogram.

also stop reading so much stuff on the net because there is too much contradictory information.

 

I live in Florida and can get an ENT appt. in one day. Anyone can. Don't know where you're getting your info on US ENT appts. from?

 

I have never been to an ENT in the US but have just been reading about how long it takes to get appointments. not only that when you first come in with problems they are likely to tell you it is an ear infection and put you on antibiotics. By the time you realize it isn't an infection but sudden hearing loss , your most potent window of recovery is pretty much over

I could be wrong, but frequently I read about people who get sudden hearing loss and don't get the steroid regimen right away.

 

I lived in the US almost all my life. It takes a long time to make an appointment with a specialist.

my reading comment was directed at people who get confused about what treatment to undergo.

I am very satifised with my chinese doctor who sent me to ER 1 hour after diagnosing me and put me on vasilodators and steroids. It's already working. recovered significant amount of hearing.

I'm here to relay my positive experience so others can do the same.

I am not here to engage in verbal squabbles. thank you.

 

also I'm convinced tinnitus is correlated with hearing loss.

My tinnitus is going away as my hearing is coming back. the hiss is gone, but I still have a slight tone in my left ear. this is actually manageable even if it doesn't go away. having functional hearing loss in one year is the WORST as everything sounds off and you can't locate the directional source of sounds very well.

 

Hearing has come back substantially after day 3 of steroids, gingko, vincopetine etc.

catch is the tinnitus is louder today with some minor hiss. I see this as a good sign. means something is changing in my ear.

I am amazed at how quickly this is happening. Sudden hearing loss is very diff. from noise induced. the latter is harder to treat.

 

Tinnitus is getting a bit louder and changing frequency. I am assuming this is part of the recovery process. Hearing is almost fully back. about 80% now. The roids and chinese meds work.

 

Day 4 of treatment.

Hearing has not improved drastically today, but tinnitus seems to be more manageable.

Started constraint therapy. basically I plug the good ear to make the bad ear work harder therefore avoiding maladaptive neural reorganization

Tomorrow I do hyperbaric oxygen.

 

You sound like you are on a similar treatment and time frame I was on. I tracked my entire treatment of Prednisone, Magnesium, Calcium, Zinc, B12, and sound therapy treatment for 2 weeks in this thread. You can find a recap in this post.

The gradual decline throughout the day I experienced on Prednisone continued even after I finished Prednisone but I am currently scheduled to undergo AM-101 administration because it's still present, though much lower than when I initially got T. I definitely feel like Prednisone helped in the first couple of days, and perhaps overall, however, it didn't cure it. A lot of people on here have been on a similar treatment to yours and mine, like @Sorin, and some have had more success than others. I experienced as much as 5 hours of silence the first day on it, but it ended it up being the best improvement on Prednisone, and came close to that on Day 3, afterwards it was more or less constant, but low. Sorin has reported as much as 2 days of silence. Other members claimed they would get as much as 2 weeks of silence after Prednisone course, but then would return.

It definitely seems like your Chinese doc gave you the right combination of meds when you went to see him that is typically given as a standard response to T and sudden hearing loss. Nice that your ENT declared it a medical emergency. They still haven't quite caught up to that in 99% of places world wide.

I understand the feeling of optimism you felt when you initially saw a response, and didn't want to respond yet, because I felt the same my first day on Prednisone when it was completely silent for 5 hours and hoped that maybe you would continue to notice even more improvement. But now that I am seeing you are also experiencing some fluctuations afterwards, I think this might be useful to give you an idea of what others like myself have experienced which may help you deal with any setbacks you might be experiencing.

 

thoughtful post! thanks for relaying your experience.

i had no T until I began recovering my hearing. prior to that it was just a plugged up full feeling with hyperacusis.

the hyperacusis is a lot better now, but the T has gone up with my hearing recovery. I find this strange.

Still I would rather get full hearing back with T, then partial hearing without T.

Functionally for day to day I think my hearing is 100% functional and this is only after 4-5 days.

I was just surprised how quickly I could recover my hearing with the steroids.

I am pretty sure it was the steroids because I had the SNHL for 4-5 days prior to the steroid treatment with little change. 2nd day on after steroids , I noticed a dramatic hearing improvement but at the same time T!

The T isn't bad at all when you're outside or listening to music at a reasonable level. it's bad when it's silent and esp. when you're trying to sleep pumped up full of roids!

 

It definitely seems like your Chinese doc gave you the right combination of meds when you went to see him that is typically given as a standard response to T and sudden hearing loss. Nice that your ENT declared it a medical emergency. They still haven't quite caught up to that in 99% of places world wide.

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yes I'm reading so many cases where people are misdiagnosed, or they have to wait too long to get treatment or insurance approval. IN China it's quick and cheap and they have hi-tech equipment. they have all the diagnostic tools.

the most expensive stuff wasn't even the doc visits.. i spent most of my money on the liquid gingko and vincopetine. I guess that's how they make their money. treatment cost around 500 for 9 days with IV drip. CHEAP.

 

Yeah Prednisone can certainly help with hearing loss if administered quickly enough and it sounds you got it in time to still have a significant effect. Good to hear your hearing restored. The sooner the better. Speaking of your sleeping problem, do take notice that while I did not have trouble sleeping, I did experience a few side effects like dry lips, bloating, and probably the worst of all, a feeling of confusion and a zombie state by the end of the day, along with noticeable short term memory problems(I couldn't remember if I took the pills 2 minutes prior, for example!). I'm glad I was given Prednisone but I was also ready to be off of it and fortunately my T seemed to stay at a pretty constant low level since.

I spend pretty much most of my day in silence, so for me it's hard not to notice even at a low level. But it's manageable, I habituated very quickly. Stay positive!

 

i'm trying to do everything I can within the first 2 weeks to get maximal hearing gains.

my T isn't that bad, it's more like faint pink noise with a hazy tone. in fact it feels like a louder version of the sound of your own body in a quiet environment. still now that I have T i can see why it's annoying. I always felt people with T were mentally ill or just imagining it, but I can confirm now it's a real thing.

still I would trade mild to moderate T for full spectrum hearing from 20-1400hz anyday.

 

Cool. from your thread it seems like you were more concerned with T than the hearing loss?

how bad was your hearing loss? mild moderate or severe?

the thing is SNHL has a high recovery rate, but they are not really clear about what recovery means. RECOVERY of hearing but with T and H? they say full recovery is quite common esp. if you're younger or start treatment early. do they mean full recovery or hearing but disregard T and H?

I am very optimistic now about the constrained therapy. I think it makes sense to exercise the bad ear to prevent false wiring of my brain. I am also starting hyperbaric oxygen tommorrow which they say can cure T if caught early.

I read that T can be cured within 6 weeks onset or if it's related to a condition like SNHL. noise induced T is probably harder to cure.

 

Well technically we are mentally ill... Our brains have neurons that fire uncontrollably and some of us have conversations to a sound in our head. If I could just get rid of that other AlexSongitus guy that keeps trying to take meds to get rid of me, I will completely take over...

Alex "T",

Have a niczzzzzzzzzzzy day!

 

also studies show that 30-40% of SNHL cases happen in jan or feb.. this is prob some seasonable biology effect.

almost everyone sitting next to me in the IV drip room got SNHL... i'm talking about 4-5 people at a time right around me talking about losing hearing in one side. hearing loss is very very mysterious. I did nothing to cause this. no loud noise.. well it did happen a few hours after I stepped off the plane, but I don't know if that's the cause. I def. think one little incident can tip it over though.

i'm happy that I got better, but I pray to get all of my hearing back. the full spectrum.

 

20-14,000 hz I meant. not 1400

 

Yeah I had my first ENT diagnose me with like 10-20db hearing loss in the 8000Hz range before Prednsione, and a week later I had a 40db drop after Prednisone...go figure. I have since had a third audiotest that confirmed the 40db hearing loss with 2 different pair of headphones. Honestly, I diagnosed myself with a whole bunch of hearing gaps in other ranges as well, but I honestly can't tell my hearing got worse since before T. I'm sure it did, but I don't know how much of that loss came from the noise exposure, and how much of it was accumulate it throughout the years before I got T. This is the first time I had the test done, so who can tell how much of that damage took place during my lengthy 3 day noise exposure and how much of it came years earlier.

The only time I feel my hearing affected is when T is loud. When it's nearly silent I feel no difference in my hearing, so I'm good there.

 

wow there are some great doctors in china, in the UK I went after 2 weeks of tinnitus. Doctor look at my ears and said come back in 3 months. Anyway congrats on quick treatment.

 

the healthcare system looks ghetto as hell from the outside, but it's effective. when I first went in I was like this is a crappy hospital. full of people waiting in line.. 100s to thousands waiting for ENT specialists.

but there are so many doctors that it's pretty quick even if there are 100 people ahead of you.

I am just very happy the doctor who only saw me for like 5 minutes told me to get an audiogram, and said he would wait for me, I came back and within another 3-4 minutes he was like you have SNHL.. go downstairs get the roids, take them and do the gingko, vincopetine IV drip. he did not waste anytime.

without the IV drip, the entire thing with roids would only be like 100 bucks and that's WITHOUT INSURANCE.

 

Interesting to hear about the Vincopetine IV. It definitely sounds like they gave you a full dose of any and everything that could potentially help. So consider yourself lucky on that.

 

Day 5. added hyperbaric oxygen

immediate reduction of hyperacusis. mild reduction of tinnitus.

the steroids and hyperbaric seem to have the most immediate effects

functional hearing seems about 90% on the left ear on the street.

also interesting effect of perfect sound kind of wavering in momentarily before going back to baseline

 

this hyperbaric thing is amazing. vast reduction in tinnitus 1 hr. after therapy.

was under 1.5 atm for 100 minutes.

hyperacusis basically GONE while out on the street.

the tinnitus now is more of a pink noise now and the tone is gone for the most part!

 

not even noticing the tinnitus now. i expect the tinnitus to come back at some point but this is very promising. actually as I type this, it came back lol. I swallow my own saliva and it's gone.

I actually think, THINKING ABOUT THE T, brings out the T. seriously for about 5-10 min. I had no T. now it's back compared to when I first started typing. I still see this as a good sign. the T is vastly reduced though compared to yest.

I totally recommend hyperbaric oxygen.

 

Stereo imaging is much improved after plugging my good for more than half the day
I am doing everything I can at this point esp. in the critical 30 day window

 

First thing my ENT gave me was an injection of Prednisone and an 8 day tapered course of Prednisone. Gave me an audiogram and determined SSHL. Scheduled me for an intratympanic injection of cortiosteroids, to see if it could save my hearing hair cells, which I did.

Again, this my experience on ENT's in my area and we also have the well known Silverstein Institute here in Sarasota. Google it.

 

recovery is going great. my hearing has recovered almost completely up to 9K or so

still have hearing loss above 10K but even that is getting better

Tinnitus symptoms have improved greatly