New to the Forum With What I Think Is an Unusual Cause

Let me start out by saying I worked in fields where noise exposure was common. For instance in the emergency field where I had a siren blasting away over top without hearing protection. I also went to firing ranges where hearing protection was needed, and I used the best on the market. I also worked in areas where hearing protection was a requirement due to heavy construction noise and equipment (generators, steam valves, etc.) at a nuclear power plant. So other than the siren noise, most of my exposure was with good hearing protection in place. About the only other thing I ever exposed my ears to was some rock music at concerts, but it was infrequent.

Despite all the aforementioned, I never had hearing issues, and certainly not tinnitus. As a matter of fact, I use to like to go in areas with little to no noise, just to relax. So even if I had a low level of it, I think I would have noticed.
Anyway, one day I needed to have a dental filling replaced on my left side. The dentist took a long time drilling out the old filling, and replacing it. I have had dental work done in the past with noisy drills, but never had an issue.
Well this time, within a day of my procedure, I sensed that I had ringing in my left ear. It was not loud, and only on the left. Within days it got a little louder, so I called the dentist to let him know and asked when he thought it would go away. I told him it might only be a coincidence but I had never had any type of ringing in my ear before. He said he did not believe in coincidences, and even though he was not aware of drilling noise causing it, he wanted me to see an ENT.
I went in to see the ENT, and he did all sorts of tests. He said I had some high frequency deficit, but that is all he found wrong. However he said my symptom was possibly tinnitus related. I asked if it could have been caused by the drilling, and he said any loud noise can cause damage, but he was not sure there was a correlation.

Now I am fully aware that it might not be related, but for it to suddenly start the next day on the same side certainly makes me think of a cause & effect. Could it be a coincidence, sure. But I am wondering if my speculation has any merit since others may have had the same experience. I also wondered if there has even been any studies on a connection to the level of DB's people are exposed to when their teeth are drilled?

Needless to say I now suffer from this malady, as I suspect that most people here do. So I am reaching out to see what you'll know on the subject of tinnitus being related/caused by dental noise that we are exposed to?

 

Several days and 45 views without a single opinion or even a hello?

 

If you'd been exposed to that much noise for so long even if you wore ear protection it could still cause damge. Ears are so fragile we can't see them which makes it difficult to protect them. I think the drilling could've been the final push. Maybe all the over loud noises helped and then the drilling tipped it over the edge. However I'd look into the dental work done to you and the possibility that it caused your T. You never know.

You can try herbal remedies that are romured to help. There are a lot of things you can do to make it easier to live with T. So don't worry!
Looking for the cause of your T and looking at the structure of your ears will be good info to help. My audiologist wants me to have a scan to see my ear structure.

Stay strong stay awesome

 

Thanks for the reply and advice.

While the cause may be irrelevant to help me at this point, I just wonder if it could be a cause others might be able to mitigate in some fashion if it is a suspected culprit? I am not sure what type of DB's are produced by high speed dental drills, but the proximity to ones ear, and prolonger exposure over an hour or more might be cause for concern.
I just wonder if it has been looked into thus far?

 

@WARM In my opinion--there could be a lot of reasons for what caused/triggered tinnitus and, from what I've seen here, there's really not much more than we can do than guesswork. I would suspect that long-term noise exposure (even with protection) contributed to yours, like mine did (although I did a much worse job at protecting my ears from noise exposure than you did.) From what I understand though, it usually seems to be an "adverse" event that can trigger it. For me, I suspect it was the ear infection I had, which triggered it because of my long-term noise-induced hearing loss (which I didn't even know I was really doing until after I got some audiograms after my tinnitus was triggered.) So it seems logical that if you had long-term noise-induced hearing loss and/or damage to the nerves from noise, a trip to the dentist could have triggered something there. Maybe not due to the noise itself but maybe from poking around in the mouth--the nerves in the mouth and ears are all pretty close to each other.

 

My Chiro has 3 patients with tinnitus, one of them claims his was caused by the dentist when getting a couple of filings in his back molars. One of my friends has had T for years. When I first got mine I was beating myself up about it pretty good. He said something that really helped me to stop blaming my self. He said that it isn't one event that causes T but likely the accumulated effects from years of sound exposure, so it would likely have come eventually with time regardless of what we do from day to day. So go out and live! My friend is also completely deaf in one ear and almost deaf in the other.