Has Anyone Ever Regained Their Lost Hearing?

The title, basically. Having some sort of Middle Ear Myoclonus (MEM), and Conductive Hearing Loss (CHL) seems to be part of it. However, I also seem to not hear some higher frequency sounds as well in my affected ear, and I only noticed this loss in hearing after this issue started.

I have linked my hearing test results at the bottom, you tell me if it's good or bad.

I don't know if CHL can affect my overall hearing. From what I've read, CHL isn't actually losing the ability to hear, but rather complications that mess with the functions of the middle ear, and I don't know once again if the middle ear can also affect my overall hearing. It's definitely not calming, but CHL can probably go away, so I'm not losing all hope.

Still, is there anyone with CHL or even "sound based" hearing loss who might have regained their lost hearing? If you are one such person, how did it happen?

Do I have reasons to be hopeful about my hearing?

 

Do not quote me on this, I cannot prove this. But I remember coming across some research papers that stated damaged hair cells can heal, and ribbon synapses may regrow, perhaps if the spiral ganglion cells they are attached to aren't damaged.

The ear obviously does heal and the healing properties are not observed, which it did in my case after over dosing on magnesium, b-12 and melatonin but it can't completely recover, it's just about bringing back as much hearing as possible.

 

I think this is why audiologists use a battery of tests and not just one test to show hearing ability.

For example; They use tests like OAE, Acoustic Reflex, Differential Immittance, speech audiometry and frequency response to come up with a holistic view.

Another Example; Physically the OAE may show fails at certain levels yet your speech recognition may be fine at that hsz.

At least this is what my audiologists (multiple) have told me.

 

It does: your "total hearing" is the "sum" of Conductive hearing and SensoriNeural hearing.

In my case, otosclerosis screwed up both CH and SNH. I did surgery (stapedotomy) and I recovered most of the conductive losses.

If you have an air-bone gap (which you seem to have, according to your audiogram), then I'd suggest you talk to a specialist of the middle ear to narrow down what is causing the conductive losses, and possible ways to fix it.

Do realize however that any middle-ear surgery that could close your air-bone gap and help you regain hearing is not going to help you regain your sensorineural losses (which do exist, per your audiogram), so you will still have losses, just not as pronounced (maybe - see below).

Finally, your air-bone gap isn't massive (it looks around 10 dB) and could also be due to conditions of the test. I would be surprised if any doctor recommended surgery to reclaim a possibly inaccurate 10 dB. When I did my surgery, my air-bone gap was around 50 dB.

Good luck!

 

You seem to know quite a lot about how to read the test results. Do you think you can explain some of the diagrams to me? The only diagram I know how to read is basically the hearing level at the top left.

 

There's only 2 types of diagrams there: the top left which you understand already and the ones to the right that test ear drum pressurization (one graph per side). Those can detect issues such as fluid in the middle ear or a hole in your drum.

The other stuff is tables with results, such as speech discrimination, air bone gaps, etc... You can see that quite a few are empty, which I imagine is because they didn't run the test.

 

Below the hearing level graph is a table with only the number "55" included. What is that for?

 

I'm not sure: it's in the Bone Conduction Right Ear row, but I don't know exactly what it means and why it's so off to the right.

 

Oh, so that's what BC means. Do you know what AC above that means as well?

Sorry for asking so many questions. It's just that I would love to be able to fully understand my hearing test results to possibly know what is really wrong.

 

I imagine it's Air Conduction.

Absolutely. I encourage you to learn as much as you can about your condition.

 

@GregCA if you don't mind me asking, how did you determine my air bone gap from the results? You also mentioned it's about 10 dB, it's a smaller value better?

Do you also know what the PTA table near the bottom left is for?

 

Look at the legend: for your right ear, the air conduction is marked with a "O", and the bone conduction with a "<" so you follow the curve made of "O" and the curve made of "<" and you see that they are off by about 10 dB.

I would imagine, yes, since the difference is the losses due to your middle ear (well, anything from the drum to the cochlea).

I don't know for sure, but it does look like a recap of what I showed you above (ie computing the difference between AC and BC), perhaps with averaging. I'm just guessing here.

 

Judging from the picture of my hearing test, do you think there was enough testing done?

 

There isn't any way to know if any of these are damaged or fine, right?

 

Is it possible that the CHL could be affecting the SNHL?

 

I can't imagine any causation, but I do know correlation exists since it is exactly what happened to me, where otosclerosis triggered both CHL and SNHL.

 

Has your CHL gotten better?

 

Yes, after surgery.

 

And your SNHL, did it get better after surgery?

 

No, it actually got a bit worse. It was not supposed to get better with surgery.

 

So how are things for you now? I don't know exactly how long you've had T and other related issues, has any of it gotten better?

 

My hearing got better with the surgery, since my 50 dB air-bone-gap got closed, but I got a bit of worsening in the high frequencies so I have pretty bad high frequency loss and, unsurprisingly, pretty bad T as a result.

 

Did the surgery totally close the air-bone gap? And when your hearing improved, was it the conduction or sensorineural portion?

 

Pretty much, yes.

Only the conductive part. If there was any surgery that could improve sensorineural losses, we'd all be over the moon about it! That's what pretty much all efforts to "cure hearing loss" are about.

 

I see. Well, I guess it's best to take care of myself for now. I am doing some neck exercises as I am pretty sure it's affecting my hearing in some way. I actually felt or heard cracking noises not only in my neck, but what seems to be my middle ear?