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COVID hearing loss reversal? Any ideas?

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New doc Monday, hopefully he’ll have an answer. He is highly recommended.

Sad news. New doc agrees that nothing can be done, I’m just SOL.

I was prepared for that.

But I like the new doc better than the one that replaced my old retired doc.

So now it’s to PubMed to see if I can find any alternative treatments. Not likely, but I need to exhaust all possibilities before I give up.

Edited

I’m not much help for reversing hearing loss, but I get why you’d want to chase every stone. My dad lost partial hearing after a viral infection and never fully recovered, even after trying steroids and some natural supplements. after ENT just gave him the same answers: sometimes the damage is just done, and most treatments only help if started early. Delays with appointments and the runaround with specialist offices definitely made the whole thing much more frustrating for him too. If you’re interested in managing nutrition to keep the rest of your health on track, you could look into Menalam. They do personalized supplement recommendations and take a science-based approach, which my cousin tried when she was recovering after illness.

Sudden hearing loss from any cause, need to start steroids urgently within the first week or so after noticing the loss. Steroids aren’t a guaranteed fix for the hearing loss though. It’s worth trying though, sadly some get positive results others don’t get any improvement.

I wish I had known about the urgency of treatment starting within a few days after suffering a SSHL myself. I had unilateral hearing loss until I suffered a SSHL 2016. When I saw the 4 months later, all that bozo said was now you have bilateral hearing loss. So I walked out from that clinic and never went back.

Has anyone tried acupuncture? Traditional Chinese Medicine Herbs?

I’d hate to waste money on them if they don’t work, but would spend if they would help.

They do not work. Save your money for something fun or something that supports your current function.

Acupuncture has SO MUCH negative research associated with it at this point it seems ethically questionable even continuing to spend research dollars on it. But we do because we’re weirdly obsessed with it. Sticking needles in you (not in magical chakras, just wherever) can have some transient pain benefits and transdermal stimulation a bit more so. But acupuncture? No. It certainly cannot regrow your damaged hair cells.

Now that all said, I have one patient whose rapid sensorial loss post COVID (not sudden, but fast) recovered from severe to mild after a year and a half and her said she’d saw the same in one other patient. So…covid is mysterious. The patient didn’t do anything special. They wore a hearing aid on the side until suddenly over a few months it got too loud. They have a relatively healthy, non smoking lifestyle and are a little younger than you.

In reply to @Deaf_piper

Yes, forget acupuncture or other TCM hearsay. I was totally unaware of hearing loss associated with covid, but a quick tour at PubMed learns that this is, in fact, quite frequent. As mentioned above by Deaf-Piper, an immediate course with steroids is recommended, but the window for efficacy is short. The most likely explanation of what is going on is that the covid virus is associated with a totally messed-up immune response (this, and not the virus itself, is also what causes the mortality and “long covid”). One of the hypotheses is that a latent, opportunistic herpesvirus (which hides in nerves) exploits this perturbation in its status to cause neuropathy and hearing loss. Herpesvirus flareups are well known to cause sensoneurological damage and this can -when treated early with steroids- be partly prevented from getting worse. Once the damage is done there is some hope that the neuronal pathways can reroute over time (neuronal plasticity), as Neville says, but you can only wait and hope.

@RobHooft @Neville I’ve got an acquaintance that had SSHL. She went straight to a public hospital emergency. Department. She did a course in the hyperbaric O2 Chamber. She did the steroid injections, started the day she noticed hearing loss, followed by 10 sessions in the chamber, 1 hour each session. She initially thought the chamber was helping. But a month down the track it didn’t help. Have you had any experience/knowledge with the use of the O2 chamber for SSHL?

Very interesting, never heard of this (again), however HBOT is often used in , also in the context of covid, even as its mode if action is not fully understood:

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy for sudden sensorineural hearing loss (Review)

Sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) is an acute hearing disorder that develops rapidly and is an otolaryngology emergency. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), a non-pharmacological treatment, has gained increasing attention for SSNHL management....

Surprised that BobbyBoomer’s doctors never suggest this, as there seem to be no adverse effects. Not sure if such a facility is widely available, though.

Edited

In reply to @Deaf_piper

Yes, it has just started to be covered by our universal health system for this here, so there must be enough positive evidence. A lot of sessions early on. The last time I dug into the literature it was fairly weak, but that was a long time ago. Again, it’s being used early after the loss and I’ve seen it work and not work. One case I saw that worked was literally for hearing loss associated with the bends after scuba though.

The trouble with trying to figure out if anything works for ssnl is that spontaneous recovery rates are actually fairly high, and that recovery is more likely early than late. So studies that say that steroids injections worked better if done sooner…well, is that because the steroid treatment did anything or just because for people for whom it is going to recover it does so sooner. You need a lot of people in a sample in order to have the statistical power to overcome this. Additionally, it’s hard to even say what the spontaneous recovery rate is because a lot of people who lose their hearing and then recover it simply never show up for examination.

If I had a sudden loss I often think I wouldn’t do oral steroids and would go straight to injected because the general risks are lower (it’s not systemic) and prednisone make me feel awful. But realistically I probably would panic and do oral as well. I would probably try the hbot if I didn’t have to pay for it, but might not if I did.

@RobHooft said:

Very interesting, never heard of this (again

It’s not the first line of treatment down here. Steroid injections/tablets (huge doses) are. But HBOT is gaining popularity in our public hospital system. We have 2 chambers here in Melbourne at 2 of our major trauma public hospitals. Again they need to be started ASAP within the first week.

Thanks for the responses.

After the first doc gave me prednisone and then said there is nothing else she can do, I went to another doc for a second opinion, and he agreed with her.

Even with hearing aids, this diminishes my quality of life. I’m not a TV watcher, one rented movie per week is it, but without captions, I can’t understand most of what they are sayin. In restaurants and other noisy places, communication is minimal, at best. Even in quiet spaces, if the speaker is soft-spoken, I’m not getting it.

So I of course am hoping for something, anything that I can do to improve my situation.

I don’t want to waste money on ‘snake oil’ which is why I asked here in the first place.

I know, in life, you just have to play the hand you are dealt the best you can, which is why I’m still searching for something to help. It’s not an obsession, but every once in a while if I have a particularly hard day, I’ll look for something, and usually end up disappointed. But IMO it’s still better than not trying a better way to play the hand.

Edited

HBOT is effective, particularly when used early, as steroid. The sooner the better, but sometimes somewhat effective even after 4 weeks (but I wouldn’t risk waiting such long time).

There should be at least 10-15 courses, sometimes 30.

Each course should have at least 3x20 mins 100% oxygen in at least 2.5 ATA pressure. There are also chambers with 3.0 ATA.

The clue is making much more oxygen partial pressure in end tissues like cochlea. With 100% oxygen at 2.5 ATA, there is 5×2.5 = 12.5 times more oxygen partial pressure in end tissues.

(5 is because of rounding in calculation: 100%/21% ≈ 5)

In reply to @Neville

Phonaks, as set up by audi. Bothe opinions are the right ear is too far gone.

When gigging, I use the Phonak TV Connector connected to our mixer, run the balance to almost all TVC and turn the volume down. With molded ear speakers, I can tune out the crowd noise and listen at a low volume.

Before the hearing damage, I used musician’s ear-plugs to protect myself.

In reply to @BobbyBoomer

@BobbyBoomer said:

Here in the USA, the cost for that would be prohibitive

The specs that -user lists for a HBOT unit are in fact identical to those for the hyperbaric chambers that are used to save scuba divers who surfaced too quickly and suffer from “the bends”, i.e., 200-300 kPa (2-3x Atmospheric pressure) at 100% O2 (plus, I presume, gentle depressurization). Such chambers are fairly common standby emergency equipment in hospitals near bodies of water. The Geneva public hospital near where I live has one, next to our lake that goes 300 m deep in some places.
I imagine such chambers sit idle most of the time and could easily be repurposed for SHL, as discussed here.

But, yes, providing easy access to these idle chambers in countries that frantically resist any hint of socialized healthcare may still be a problem…

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