Downeast Mainehair cell damage vs e.g. neural damage?
Who cares? We can’t (today) cure either problem.
Actually “neural” can include neuroma, a tumor on the nerve from ear to brain. I was checked for that, because it is treatable with fair chance of improvement.
“Hair Cell” is really two rows: Inner and Outer.
The IHCs directly pick up medium to loud sounds, either from eardrum or through skull. This is where you hear.
The OHCs are “soft boosters”. They don’t talk direct to the brain. They vibrate in very soft sounds, boosting the waves in the inner ear, so the IHCs can detect the sound. In some people (me!) they are fragile and die-off over time. I can’t hear (high) soft sounds. We don’t have a direct fix, but the gain control in a modern hearing aid does much the same thing, bringing-up soft sounds so the IHCs can detect them. (And not over-exciting the OHCs that still work.)
Aside from nerve and hair-cell problems, there’s “conductive” from gummed ear-bones to stiff eardrum to wax in the canal. All of these are easily spotted so I doubt they afflict you.
The (ear nose throat) department of a GOOD hospital should be able to ring-out your hearing and get a good idea of where the problem is. Sadly most of this is not fixable with today’s medical knowledge. If you have “some” hearing, hearing aids can boost sound into the hearing you do have.
You’re ignoring this member’s posts.