Does Anyone Have Low-Frequency Hearing Loss and NOT Have Meniere's Disease?

I have a reverse ski slope audiogram. They are trying to tell me that I had Labyrintitis but I am not buying it. If I had Labyrintitis this noise would be getting better and it's not. I don't see what else it could be other than early Meniere's. Does anyone else have this and not have Meniere's?

 

I used to have this (low frequency losses) and it was otosclerosis.

 

Yes, I have this as well. I've had this problem for nearly three years. I suddenly noticed a roaring noise in my left ear, which subsided after a month of so leaving me with a low pitch hum. After six months I went to ENT where an audiogram showed that I had a severe reverse slope loss. The consultant said "cochlear hydrops" and prescribed betahistine 16mg x 3. I only took it for a few days as it upset my stomach. Six months after the first appointment I returned to ENT and my hearing had recovered so they discharged me. The tinnitus was still there though.
I have continued to have constant tinnitus - mostly a low drone - but every few days, a reactive flare-up where many things (tv, tumble drier, low flying plane etc) make it louder and sometimes pulsate. I take a very low dose of Betahistine 8mg x 3, which may help. I have reduced salt in my diet but still have coffee. My GP, when I spoke to him, a couple of months ago, looked at my notes from the hospital visit 3 yrs ago and noticed that it said 'mild menieres'. However, I have never had any dizziness or vertigo.
I have learned to cope with my tinnitus pretty well by keeping very busy with creative and absorbing hobbies. I seldom mask at night now. My last audiogram showed mild reverse slope loss in both ears. Sometimes I can feel something 'rattling about' in my worst ear when I shake my head. I mean to visit my GP to insist upon another ENT appointment. As the sensation of something moving in my ear is so definite I often wonder whether it could be sorted out in some way. Sometimes my bad ear feels blocked, and occasionally I have a tingling in the side of my face towards my eye. It is hard to get an appointment with an ENT here in the UK and I am wary about seeing a private specialist.
Sorry for such a long post, but this thread has prompted me to ask if anyone has any ideas or similar experiences. Thanks.

 

@Redhen

Did your low frequency tinnitus/hearing loss start from loud noise exposure, or is it just aggravated by noise?

I have a similar problem going on, but mine seemed to start from a migraine and then noise exposures, which frankly were not supposed to be dangerous in terms of loudness or duration. My T is aggravated by the same noise triggers as yours though...

Perhaps you yourself should consider the possibility of migraines. Do you get any other neuro symtpoms? I'm just wondering because that's another cause of that kind of hearing loss.

 

Thanks @Lauren Morse for your suggestion, but I don't think my ear problems are down to migraines. However, I am feeling much better due to a much stricter low salt diet and a pair of hearing aid/maskers. My low drone started suddenly in December 2012 and stayed with me. My 4K loss (see below) was probably caused by practicing my accordion for 10 years or so.

Low salt: I got some tips from a very helpful post a few weeks ago on this site and by checking packets and weighing food I have managed to get my salt intake down to 1,000-1,500 mg per day. It's not easy to do but it has reduced the blocked feeling in my left ear and dimmed the tinnitus. It has taken a month to feel the benefit of my new diet, which is pretty bland but it is worth it.

Hearing aid/masker: I decided to visit a private audiologist who tested my hearing and pointed out a hearing loss at 4K, in one ear, which I thought up till then was insignificant. She matched my tinnitus with a soothing whooshing sound, less 'prickly' than white noise. I have these on trial for 30 days and have worn them constantly for a week, just with the maskers on. They are wonderful. The new noise merges with my tinnitus and takes the edge off it so that I am less annoyed by it even when in the quiet. The aids have made my tinnitus less reactive as well. When I return for my next appointment I will ask the audiologist to give me a little amplification to fill in the lost 4K hearing notch.

I can't believe that I suffered for so long and now feel back in control. I hope you manage to find some relief with your tinnitus Lauren.

 

Necro, but i've got a -3 to 5 db slope starting just under 150Hz or so in my right ear compared to the left.

No balance issues or anything like MD.
Came on the same time as the rest of my loss.

 

I found out that I have a 30db loss below 1khz on my left ear and was diagnosed with mild reverse slope hearing loss. No vertigo, dizziness, pressure, and never had low hum tinnitus. I actually have no tinnitus now except in very quiet rooms. Right ear is fine. Explanation of why this might be are ear bones not working as they should and a past ear infection.

If they said "mild Meniere's" maybe they mean endolymphatic hydrops?

 

If the ear bones aren't working as they should you should see it on an audiogram (as an air-bone gap, i.e. conductive losses as opposed to sensorineural).

 

I have had loud, bilateral tinnitus since I could remember, multiple different tones, changed by moving head, clenching jaw, etc. Having had it since childhood has meant I avoided depression, freakout, etc., reported by those who acquire it as an adult. About two years ago, I developed sudden sensorineural hearing loss on the right side, which is very different and sounds like the "reverse ski slope" some here have discussed: 30-40 dB loss below 1 kHz. Low roaring tinnitus. So far, it hasn't interfered with speech discrimination, which is more sensitive to higher frequencies. What's weird in mine is that if I stick a finger in my ear and wiggle it, I hear musical tones. Nobody has yet explained why, if this is caused by hydrops, a little movement in the opening of the ear canal has this effect.

 

BC was 0db loss and conductive was 30db loss @ 250hz, 30db loss @ 500hz, 25db loss @ 750hz, & 10db loss @ 1khz. Was told (by another person) that most likely it was due to otosclerosis and that it should get worse but it should take a couple of years.

Needless to say that I won't be taking any chances because a lot of people with otosclerosis end up with tinnitus and the low frequency type. I'm going back to get hearing aids. Not really to be able to hear sounds but to help prevent tinnitus from happening.

 

Yes you can get bad T with otosclerosis (ask me how I know), I doubt hearing aids are going to prevent your from getting T since the low frequency T that comes from O is of a mechanical origin due to the stiffness in the middle ear.

The aids may help you hear better indeed for a while. You can consider doing a stapedotomy (like I did) to regain your hearing back (and not need hearing aids, unless you also have sensorineural losses that need compensation). The success rates are high, but there are some risks to it.

Your doctor should talk to you about pharmaceutical treatments too (i.e. Fluoride) to try to slow down or arrest the progression of the disease.

 

I don't see how ear stiffness would directly cause T. I would think that tinnitus might arise due to a lack of sound. Why do people with ear wax impactions sometimes get tinnitus then? People also get tinnitus when in a sound proof room. There's ambient sound everywhere and if hearing loss is 30db+ then it's like being in a soundproof room for certain frequencies because most ambient sound usually isn't that loud. I would think that hearing aids counteract this.

The specialist I talked to said that it isn't bad enough for surgery due to the risks. Also it might not be otosclerosis because there's no way to check inside the middle ear.

When I went to my GP doctor I was told that I could get an audiogram if I wanted to but it doesn't matter because there's nothing that could be done to fix hearing.

 

It does though. It is explained in a paper I read I think on pubmed - described by fluid mechanic equations even. If I recall correctly it has to deal with the way the fluid in the inner ear is impacted by the lack of mobility of the stapes brought on by the disease. It's not the only kind of T you can get from otosclerosis, but if I recall correctly it is characterized by low frequencies.

There are types of T that are brought on by lack of auditory input indeed, but it's not the first thing that comes to mind when someone may be affected by otosclerosis (because there's a much bigger elephant in that room).
At any rate, I don't think the hearing aids will hurt, so it's not a bad idea to give it a shot if just to try to hear better.

It seems to me the risk assessment should be done by the patient (i.e. you). Only you can decide if the risk is worth taking, based on the impact it has on your quality of life. His job is to give you all the data you need to make your decision, and of course there's nothing wrong with him giving you his opinion about it.
One piece of data I collected (again, via pubmed studies) is that you have about 50/50 chance of getting rid of T after surgery, but also a small chance of making T worse (in the single digit % if I remember well).

Whether it's otosclerosis or not is independent from the ability to check inside the middle ear (maybe you meant that there is no way to confirm it?).

In addition to this, there is a way to look inside the middle ear through exploratory surgery (which involves going through your ear drum).
However, that's not the first thing you'd want to do anyways: otosclerosis is diagnosed through a bunch of tests: fork/rinne test, hearing test (looking for air-bone gaps, carhart notch), ear drum inspection (schwarz sign), ct-scan (look for radiolucencies indicative of focus), etc...
I don't know anyone who has gone ahead with exploratory surgery. When I decided on surgery, I gave the go ahead to my surgeon and he obviously wasn't going to proceed if he had found out that I didn't have otosclerosis the moment he opened up the ear drum to take a look at the stapes. So in a way it's not super useful to have exploratory surgery (maybe that's why he told you there's no way to look in there).

The role of the meds isn't to fix your hearing: it's to prevent it from degrading further.

 

If this Specialist told you that, then he's no Specialist. Maybe he meant inner ear, but if he did then he isn't talking otosclerosis.

 

I have ssnhl low freq loss in most affected ear, likely as a result of the acoustic trauma over a year ago. I have roaring tinnitus in place of this low freq loss. neither my ent or audiologist seem surprised by this, despite it being an unusual and frightening worsening. I thought high freqs got damaged, whats with the ssnhl and low freq loss? nightmare

 

Have you talked to your doc about SSNHL?

 

Yes, and ENT, have follow up with ENT in a week. Doctor has extended my prednisone dosage 4 more days, because low freq hearing still not back (fully, no idea if thresholds have improved or not, no retest until prednisone is finished), roaring intermittently has come back in the bad ear even though taking prednisone. Very worried what will happen when I stop the prednisone. As the night before I Started taking the prednisone, the roaring and my constant T tones were painfully loud. Still awaiting MRI, but what are the chances it finds anything?

 

Low, but then again, low probability events do happen: that's how we ended up here actually.

 

I am completely deaf in right ear since child but have been concerned with tinnitus in my good ear for many years. Get a relatively quiet high pitch and a low hum, constantly. I started to get a new lower but loud tone approx one year ago which although infrequent (2-3 times a week) I am concerned is slowly becoming more frequent. To memory this is how the other (much easier to ignore) tinnitus started. I had an audiogram two years ago to check my good ear. My audiogram from ten years ago was a mostly flat horizontal line in the good to excellent hearing range. The gram from two years ago showed a very mild loss in the lower frequencies and a mild loss in the highest frequencies. I know that losing hearing in the higher frequencies is normal with age. My audiogram from yestersay shows a further dip in the lower frequencies but is still only very mild (25db) so I've been told there is nothing to worry about. I'm not 'too worried' other than slightly concerned that it may continue to worsen over the years. My audiologist asked me a couple times if I get dizzy, which I don't. (Although I am getting bit more clumsy but am putting it down to age. I turned 45, 2 weeks ago).
I can't find much on the internet regarding the onset of low frequency loss. It all points to Menierres but I don't have vertigo. I'll assign it to the massive black hole of unexplained hearing loss that seems to be prevalent. No one knows why I'm completely deaf in one ear for example. Sorry, long post. I'm terrible at explaining things with few words.

 

I've been deaf in one ear since birth too. I am very worried about my hearing loss and you probably should be too. It isn't normal to loose so much hearing in such a short period of time. I have heard all the same things as you. I think that they have no clue when it comes to people with single sided deafness.