My Tinnitus Origin Story: Angiogram Made Everything Worse (Ear Pain, Pressure, Terrible Tinnitus)

Hey everyone, I hope you're hanging in there through these tough times. I'm 32 years old, a fan of metal music, and dealing with chronic illness now, I guess.

I've had ringing in my ears (tinnitus) my whole life, but it used to be rare, lasting only a few seconds and occurring maybe twice a year.

However, everything changed for me on March 2nd of this year. I attended an Alkaline Trio concert and experienced symptoms similar to a mini-stroke that lasted about 5 seconds. After that, I returned to normal.

To be cautious, I went to the emergency room, where some imaging showed a possible tear in my carotid artery, but other scans did not confirm this. Two weeks after the concert, and after going through COVID-19 with no symptoms, I had a cerebral angiogram to get a better look. I was scared of having a stroke, so I agreed to the procedure.

Unfortunately, that decision turned out to be the worst mistake of my life.

After the angiogram, I started experiencing terrible ear pain and pressure on the left side, along with strange, terrible sounds in my head. I can only describe these sounds as similar to popping electric bubbles, as well as a noise like liquid moving with bubbles in my head. I also have the trademark ringing tinnitus that comes and goes all day, and it's getting worse over time. The tinnitus occurs in both ears but not at the same time.

I have no idea what happened during the angiogram, but I feel irreparably damaged and depressed. Has anyone else ever experienced this popping bubble-like noise in their head? It's kind of like when you blink and there's a little pop due to trapped air, but it's happening in my head and ears.

I'm actively trying to address this with doctor appointments, so I'll update this post as I go, in case anyone else goes through something similar in the future.

 

That's really unfortunate. Hopefully, it lightens up eventually, as it does with many other people. You're not the first person on here who's gotten worse tinnitus from the iodine contrast from a CTA scan; that's what it was, right? Or was it an MRA scan?

 

Hey there! No, it was a cerebral angiogram, which is the one where they put a catheter in your groin up to your neck arteries to look at your brain arteries and stuff. It was over two months ago, so unfortunately, I don't think it was due to the contrast. I'm afraid that that procedure caused a cranial CSF leak, which I recognize is virtually impossible, but I don't know how else to explain these horrible symptoms. I'm going to Mayo this week, so hopefully, that will get me on the road to figuring this out. It sucks!

 

Heads up for anyone concerned about Contrast CT Angiogram:

I just had a Contrast CT Angiogram scan, which didn't worsen my tinnitus.