Tympanic Neurectomy for Noxacusis

Hi folks,

I recently had a consultation with a leading researcher in ear implants who has a significant number of publications relating to otalgia, tinnitus, and hyperacusis.

He is aware of TTTS and the pain that it can cause and has treated such patients. During my consultation, he ruled out TTTS in my case as there is no evidence to support I have an overactive tensor tympani muscle. I don't have symptoms such as clicking, tapping, or anything relating to the function of the tensor tympani.

However, he believes in my case that one option is a Tympanic Neurectomy which involves sectioning the tympanic nerve. He has performed this before and it has been successful in some cases. Furthermore, he believes that the procedure is not particularly risky as patients who have had the procedure report few side effects.

I found this paper on the procedure which reports some success in otalgia cases.

In my case, nerve pain seems to originate deep in the ear and can stimulate the other nearby nerves.

I had a weird experience lately where I was stretching my neck and I got a shooting nerve pain all the way up to my neck right to my ear. The strange thing is that immediately changed my noxacusis symptoms for the better. However, a few days later when Lying down I had a similar experience and the symptoms changed again. Really curious as to how noxacusis is linked to other nerves in the body.

I was wondering what people's thoughts are on this?

I haven't seen anything on these forums about such a treatment.

Do we know of anyone who has had such a procedure?

 

That’s interesting. I will look more into it. I too sometimes will be ok walking into the other room while the dishes are being put away. I lie down and the pain comes in. My pathology is probably different, it’s probably because my head is all messed up and my inner ear pressure is all jacked up as well. My neck isn’t too bad; I had it worked on last year.

Let me know if you find out more or go through with it.

 

@Brian Newman, I think at this point in time it is unlikely I will go through with it unless I get much worse and have tried everything.

My noxacusis seems to have improved quite a bit but I am by no means out of the water.

The past couple of days I have been able to listen to music from a high-quality speaker at around 80 dB in close proximity with only minor irritation.

So there has definitely been an improvement but this condition is still hell for me.

 

@KDMG, here’s another paper on neurectomy for otalgia:

Endoscopic tympanic neurectomy for otic neuralgia—a case series


As far as noxacusis relation to other nerves in the body Norena et al state:

“We believe that our model proposes a synthetic and explanatory framework to explain the phenomena occurring postacoustic shock and potentially also after other nonauditory causes. Indeed, due to the bidirectional properties of the TCC, musculoskeletal disorders in the region of the head–neck complex, including neck injury due to whiplash or temporomandibular disorders, may impact the middle ear, thereby leading to otic symptoms.”

An Integrative Model Accounting for the Symptom Cluster Triggered After an Acoustic Shock

 

Damn 80 dB. Yeah you don’t need surgery. Keep laying low and resting your ears for sure. I need to look more into this.

 

Interesting.

It does appear that this procedure has a high success rate for otalgia.

It also seems that the side effects are not too bad.

I will keep this in consideration for the future.