Sudden Hearing Loss due to COVID
Unusual Sounds, and a "Reverse Cookie-Bite Audiogram"
Hearing Loss due to COVID is included on this website because nobody seems to be tracking it.
Please email if you have had any of the following:
- A hearing loss related to COVID or a COVID vaccine
- a “reverse cookie-bite” audiogram like the one depicted here ("reverse", not regular)
- Heard the whole sky rumbling (or motors creating a rumble)
- Heard a flickering gas flame
- Heard people warbling or bleating when they speak
Prednisone is known to sometimes cure Hearing Loss if taken immediately
Reliable information about Hearing is remarkably difficult to obtain, and it is hoped that collecting information will be helpful for everybody. The broad topic includes the following types of things:
(i) It is well-known that a “sudden hearing loss” can often be cured, and Rauch on Dana.org should be read by anybody who thinks this may be happening (https://www.dana.org/article/reversing-sudden-deafness/). This might be called Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SSNHL), and the cure is to take Prednisone immediately, which requires the patient to be abnormally persistent. That day if possible. And the only actual information seems to be that the hearing issue either responds to steroids or it doesn’t, with any other discussion or delay being a distraction.
(ii) It is also well-known that Prednisone can treat Autoimmune Inner Ear Disease (AIED).
(iii) The hearing loss plotted here responded rapidly to Prednisone, and perhaps Prednisone could be evaluated as a general treatment for hearing concerns, which are usually hard to describe in words. If nothing improved in 2 or 3 days it could be discontinued, for example.
(iv) There are published reports of hearing loss due to both COVID and the COVID vaccine.
(v) Patients are told to not measure their own hearing, yet this is easy to do with a cellphone and noise-canceling earbuds. Often one ear is compared to the other, and very accurate sound levels are not needed. Many hearing tests that are online or available as Apps are very poor, and one particular test was used here (email for details; not included as a link).
(vi) Patients are not helped to describe what they hear, or to relate it to the non-linearity of the tone audiogram. For example, a 30 dB loss means that something has to be 1000 times louder to be able to hear it. It is very difficult for a patient to make sense of what they hear without assistance.
(vii) Discussion of unusual sounds rapidly leads to mention of “tinnitus”, yet that has a very clear definition where no external sound can be causing it. If someone puts in earplugs, and the sound goes away, that cannot be tinnitus. The sounds heard here were not tinnitus.
(viii) This COVID hearing loss happened to a person who already had full Single-Sided Deafness (SSD), which had gradually developed over many years.
(ix) Everyone might get COVID now from time to time, and one possibility is that this hearing loss is both relatively common, and also treatable if addressed immediately. It is also possible that other types of hearing issues have been labeled tinnitus because these types of unusual sounds have simply not been envisaged. Please email with any information or comments.
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Hermann von Helmholtz worked on both vision and hearing, and recent information relating to the bicentenary of his birth is at Helmholtz200 and HelmholtzBook (but both are in German).