Prednisone Restored Hearing Loss and Stopped Tinnitus, Then It Came Back — What to Do?

Due to a concussion on the right side of my head, my left ear has had tinnitus at 14khz, 7khz other times, and hearing loss from 7khz on up. I am not deaf at these frequencies, but there is a significant difference between my ears.

About 5 weeks ago, I did a 6 day course of prednisone of 20mg/day. The sound between both ears equalized during that time and the tinnitus was brought under control for long periods of the day. But after I stopped, the tinnitus came back and the sensitivity difference between the ears returned.

I just did a sort of home audiology test with a tone generator, and as I said, 7khz and above is pretty bad for my left ear. Where I can hear the sound fine in my right, in my left I hear nothing at the same volume. The threshold difference is easily 10db, probably more.

I want to call the ENT tomorrow and ask if a longer course of prednisone could restore my hearing for good as I think it was not long enough or a high enough dose, but I am afraid it is too late and I am outside the window of possibility to do any good here. I only reported tinnitus to him and not any hearing loss at the time. Again, the damage in my case is my brain, not the ear as far as I know, as the impact was on the opposite side of my head on my auditory cortex/temporal lobe.

Is there a window to try another course of prednisone and would this possibly be effective this late in the game? 20mg/day definitely equalized my ears back in late March. I had started it 5 days after the tinnitus began.

Any advice is very much appreciated. I have an appointment with a neurologist this week, but I doubt he is going to prescribe me any prednisone or be of much use anyway as I've heard they really don't know much about concussions.

 

I'm wondering something very similar.
I've had constant tinnitus since the end of January and I have no idea what the onset was really.
I'm wondering if a course of prednisone would be in any way beneficial or if I've waited too long as well.
(I'm a nurse and I don't even know. But I don't think it would hurt either)

 

Check out
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/prednisone-just-improved-my-hearing-8-months-after-onset.19086/

 

You can go to the emergency and tell them that you just started having tinnitus (or, even better, sudden hearing loss). Tell them that you know that sudden hearing loss is a medical emergency (and that your tinnitus might be a symptom of hearing loss) and that one is supposed to get a course of prednisone in cases like that. If your doctor is like the emergency doctor I had a chance to talk to, he or she will give you a week's supply for prednison and refer you to an ENT, for the rest of prednisone. I guess you could then go to another emergency room and try this one more time. Desperate times call for desperate measures...

 

Steroids work sometimes but overusing them may worsen your tinnitus, I used them a month after a bad long term spike from noise exposure and an ear infection now in a 19 days therapy started with 250mg mow at 10, sometimes it spiked the tinnitus to 10, sometimes it lowered it to 3... at day 15 atm so hard to judge, can give you a pretty hard time, were hours when the Tinnitus was all I heard, not sure it had any effect in the end, will tell in a month or two

 

@Bill Bauer are you from UK? It's basically impossible to get prednisone in the UK for hearing loss or tinnitus.. I asked 3 doctors and 2 walk in centres and they refused

 

For some people prednisone can help but it's not a fix .
Your tinnitus can return after they wear off.
They come with lots of problems long term and not to be over used.
Only take them a lot due to health reasons.

Love glynis

 

I live in Canada. I showed the emergency doctor a printout of
http://www.masseyeandear.org/for-pa...ation/diseases-and-conditions/sudden-deafness
he gave me a 7-day supply of prednisone. It is possible that I got lucky.

When I saw an ENT on day 7, he didn't prescribe prednisone for week 2 to me. What happened is that when he asked me "how are you?" when I walked in, I couldn't help it and burst into tears. He thought that I was already on edge, and didn't give me steroids. This is bizarre - you would think he would try to do something about the cause of my distress (which was T). I kind of lied - my T was not "sudden onset" - I know what caused it. I wanted to try anything when I asked for prednisone at the emergency claiming that I had "sudden onset hearing loss". When it didn't help during the first week, and the ENT didn't prescribe more, I didn't insist on it. The next day I read that prednisone sometimes helps even for patients suffering from acoustic trauma. I should have tried being more firm and insisted on finishing my course of prednisone...

 

How do you know it's Predisone that helped?

 

Prednisone Didn't seem to have any impact on me (at least by day 7 of me taking it). However, studies indicate that it can help... If I were to take the entire "14 day + tapering off period" course of prednisone, I would know whether it could have helped me.

 

In my country prednisone is standard procedure for acoustic trauma and according to my ent after 3 weeks they don't prescribe it due to a sharp loss of effectiveness at that stage

There are a few solid studies on prednisone given to soldiers after shooting rifles without protection and all showed a clear effect but only in the very early stage

 

I know the above now, but I didn't know it back when I was talking to an ENT. This was less than 2 weeks after my acoustic trauma...

The original poster in this thread can tell the doctor that he had an acousic trauma incident a couple of days ago...