Hearing Loss Help  

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

In the USA, ototoxic antibiotics damage millions of people’s ears each year, yet few people (doctors included) are aware of just how common this really is.

Some months ago I received the following heartbreaking email.

Dear Dr. Neil:

In your articles about ototoxic drugs, you do not make any reference to a practice that I am learning is pretty common, and where many hearing losses occur–in the operating room, when gentamicin is given by IV prior to surgery to lower the risk of infection.

This procedure is gaining in frequency, but it is not monitored for ototoxicity when done! I lost my hearing the night of my surgery on November 8, 2004. Several nurse anesthetists have said to me: “It is from the gentamicin, and the anesthesiologists are aware of the dangers but ignore it.”

So I now have a severe hearing loss in one ear, profound distortion, extreme tinnitus and some exaggerated loudness (recruitment) of certain sounds (like the refrigerator running and the dog getting a drink—I can hear these sounds 40 feet away from the source!)

You could be very helpful to physicians and patients alike in raising awareness and caution concerning IV antibiotics. I know low infections rates play a real role in high ratings of hospitals, so there is a tendency to overdose—as in my case.

If I had known it was such a high risk, I would have kept my bum knee AND my hearing. Thank you for your excellent work!

Anne

In today’s email, Anne asked. “Would you pose a question on your blog whether anyone else has experienced hearing loss following joint replacement surgery? I have heard of two other people who have. One lost her hearing in both ears. I would love to know if this has happened to other people as well.”

Those of you that have had similar experiences, either comment directly to this blog, or email me privately if you like.

If you want to learn more about the hundreds of drugs, including Gentamicin, that ravage our ears, point your browser to Ototoxic Drugs Exposed.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Sometimes I get unusual emails. For example, one person recently wrote, “Two days ago my middle-aged boyfriend had a 20 minute hearing loss after having worked out extraordinarily strenously with his personal trainer. When he mentioned this to his trainer, his trainer told him that one other person, a woman in her 20s had told him the same thing. What’s going on?”

Strenuous exercise, whether it is lifting weights, straining to win a foot race, or even a strenuous yoga session can sometimes result in hearing loss. There are a number of causes. I’ll just mention two of them here.

First, strenuous exercise, or a blow to the side of the head, can cause a membrane in your inner ear to rupture, allowing fluid (called perilymph) to leak from either the oval window or the round window into the middle ear cavity. The fancy name for this is perilymphatic fistula. Sometimes these tears heal up by themselves. Other times they require surgery to fix them. Hearing loss from perilymphatic fistulas may be temporary or permanent. Often much, but not all, hearing returns, leaving you with some degree of permanent loss.

Another cause of hearing loss resulting from strenuous exercise is from a condition called Large Vestibular Aqueduct Syndrome (LVAS). In people with LVAS, the increase in intracranial pressure from the exercise sometimes forces the contents of the endolymphatic sac (sandwiched between the brain and the skull) to flow “backwards” to the cochlea where the extra-high ionic content of the endolymph causes problems in the inner ear. The result is hearing loss.

To learn more about LVAS, point your browser to http://www.hearinglosshelp.com/articles/lvas.htm.