Hearing Loss Help  

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man asked:

Do you have any information as to the permanence of the side effects (especially hearing loss or tinnitus) of the following SSRIs?

Celexa (Citalopram) 2
Lexapro (Escitalopram) 2
Luvox (Fluvoxamine) 3
Zoloft (Sertraline) 3
Paxil (Paroxetine) 4
Prozac (Fluoxetine) 4

I’m curious as to why two of these SSRIs receive a severity rating of 4 when the worst antibiotics receive a 5. Are the SSRIs really that dangerous at prescribed levels? If you don’t have the answers perhaps you could recommend a place I could find further information (i.e. The Physicians’ Desk Reference, or a web site database on drug side effects?)”

You ask some excellent questions and I wish I had definitive answers to give you. I have scoured all the sources you mention, and many more, and what I have reported in my book Ototoxic Drugs Exposed is what I have found.

The truth is, the ototoxic side effects of drugs are seldom specifically studied during drug trials. As a result, information on ototoxicity is sketchy at best. That is why little or nothing is officially known about the permanence of the ototoxic side effects of most drugs, including the SSRIs.

When I rate any drugs for their risk of ototoxicity, it is my own personal and subjective rating based on very incomplete data. This rating is based on any information available to me at the time I made it. It is typically not based on the results of double blind, or other studies. I may be totally off the mark, but this rating is still my best guess. You can use these ratings as a guideline if you want, or totally ignore them. However, if you don’t have a clue about the ototoxic risk of a given drug, this risk rating could be a good starting point in deciding whether you might want to risk the ototoxic side effects of taking that drug or not.

My purpose is to warn people ahead of time that many drugs are ototoxic, and also give them the best information I have found about any given drug’s degree of ototoxicity.

“Are the SSRIs really that dangerous at prescribed levels?” This is a difficult question to answer because there is very little concrete data available. Furthermore, doctors are free to prescribe drugs at any dosage they want, for as long as they want. However, if the dose exceeds the levels used during the drug trials, no one knows what the risk of any resulting ototoxic side effects may be. To complicate things further, some people are very sensitive to drugs in general so they might have an ototoxic reaction at the “recommended” dose, while others may not experience any ototoxic side effects even when taking the drug at higher than recommended levels.

However, I have heard from a sufficient number of people that have had ototoxic side effects from taking SSRIs that I believe these drugs can be dangerous to our ears.

Unfortunately, all too often, ototoxic side effects are not reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) like they are supposed to be. It seems that doctors very seldom report any side effects to the FDA, so the few side effects reported actually represent an enormous number of people who got these same side effects. Thus, ototoxic side effects are not the rare occurrences they might appear to be. Even the FDA estimates that less than 1% of all the side effects of drugs are ever reported to them. In the case of the side effects of ototoxic drugs, I believe the true number reported is only a small fraction of 1%.

Getting back to the permanence of ototoxic side effects, what I included in Ototoxic Drugs Exposed is pretty well everything I had found out about that drug up to that time. So if I don’t indicate anything about permanence, nothing was specifically said about it. As time goes on, and as people tell me their stories as to the permanence of a given drug’s ototoxic side effects, I gain more information and will include it in future editions.

For all the drugs on your (above) list, I have not seen any studies to indicate whether their ototoxic side effects are permanent or not. However, for Zoloft (Sertraline) and Prozac (Fluoxetine) I have a number of anecdotal reports from people taking them that indicates both good news and bad news. The good news is that for some people part of their hearing loss is
temporary. The bad news is that most of these people also reported a significant degree of permanent hearing loss. One anecdotal report revealed that the resulting hearing loss and tinnitus were permanent, and gave no indication that any hearing ever came back. That is why I urge caution whenever you are considering taking any drug thought to be ototoxic.

For general information on the side effects of ototoxic drugs, read our various articles on ototoxic drugs.

For more complete information and for individual listings on each of the known ototoxic drugs and chemicals, check out Ototoxic Drugs Exposed.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man wrote:

My recent installation of your hearing loop pad is working remarkably well, leading me to believe that the t-coil in my hearing aid is in good shape. Prior to this, I thought the t-coil was defective because it had no effect when trying to use it with my “hearing aid compatible” cordless telephone or any of my telephones. May I have your comments, please?

I’m glad to hear your loop system is working out so well for you. Loop systems are such wonderful devices and produce such clear sound, I’m surprised more people don’t use these wonderful Univox 2A loop systems.

The fact that you hear well on your loop system proves that your t-coils are working great. So why don’t they work with your various phones? Good question.

There are a couple of possibilities.

First, you need to realize that t-coils are very directional “beasties.” If they are not aligned in the same plane as the transmitting coil in the phone, the signal can fade away to almost nothing. The further they are out of alignment, the worse you hear.

Manufacturers orient the t-coils in hearing aids in various planes. If they mount them vertically, they work best with floor loops, but not with neckloops or phones. If they mount them horizontally, they work best with phones and neckloops, but not with floor loops.

To try to serve both worlds, some manufacturers split the difference and mount the t-coils diagonally. This lets them pick up both horizontal and vertical loop signals–but these signals are far from optimal.

Second, the strength of the coil in phones varies. So does their placement. If the coil is nearer the back of the handset, then it isn’t as close to the t-coil, and thus the signal is fainter than if it was mounted closer.

It takes a bit of experimenting to get around these problems. If you are having problems hearing on the phone with your t-coils, you need to find the position such that the phone’s coil and your hearing aid’s t-coil are closest together and at the same time, both coils are aligned in the same plane.

Doing this can be a finicky business. You have to move the phone handset around in relation to your hearing aid until you find the “sweet spot” where the signal is the loudest. With one phone, I actually had to turn the handset over and listen to the back of it in order to hear well!

The best way to experiment is before you make a phone call. Pick up the handset and listen to the dial tone while you move the handset around, and also tip it up and down to see where you get the loudest signal. That is where you want to hold it every time you use that phone in the future. This position is a bit different for every phone.

Another problem is that your t-coils may not have been set up properly in the first place. If you have to turn the volume way up on your hearing aids in order to hear when using your t-coils with phones, you know your t-coils are not set up properly. Your t- coils should be set so that when switching from microphone to t- coil mode the volume should appear to stay approximately the same to you. If the volume drops significantly when switching to t-coil mode, then your audiologist needs to readjust them.

The way I like to use t-coils with phones is to use the T-Links and plug them into the phone. This only works with phones that have 2.5 mm headset jacks–but all cell phones and cordless phones have such jacks, and so do some desk phones. With the T-Links, I can hear with both ears which greatly improves understanding, and I don’t have to fool around looking for that “sweet spot.”

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Did you ever wonder which would be the best hospital in which to be treated for various ear problems, or to have surgery to receive a cochlear implant?

Wonder no longer. The U.S. News and World Report has compiled a list of the top 51 ENT hospitals in the country.

In case you are interested, the number one hospital for “ears” in the USA is Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, MD. The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City, IA comes in second. In third place is the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston, MA.

You can find out the details of why these and the rest of the top hospitals ranked the way they did by clicking on the U.S. News web site, then click on “Best Hospitals” in the box at the top left, then choose “Ears, Nose & Throat.” Even faster, just click here and you’ll be taken directly to this list.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Few people know how to effectively communicate with hard of hearing people. Thus, it is always a pleasure to hear how well some people have learned proper communication strategies.

One such person is Rachel. Now a young adult, Rachel still makes sure her mother, Karen, who has been hard of hearing since before Rachel’s birth, can understand her. Notice all the things Rachel deliberately does when she talks to her mom. As Karen explains:

Rachel is excellent about communicating with me. She turns on a light near me when the room is too dim, gets my attention, faces me, speaks a little more slowly, gives me the context first, notices when my face turns to perplexed and repeats only the part that I missed, and probably does even more tricks to make the conversation flow more smoothly.

Way to go Rachel! You are a special daughter indeed—and a great role model. If everyone would follow your lead, all of us hard of hearing people would have a much easier time living in the hearing world.

If you would like to learn more about effectively communicating with hard of hearing people, you will find these, and many other communications tips in my short book, Talking with Hard of Hearing People—Here’s How to Do It Right! Click on the above link and scroll down to the second book from the bottom.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Real time captioning of meetings is not only a blessing, but a necessity for many hard of hearing people. How often have you asked a meeting organizer if a meeting was going to be captioned, only to be met by a blank stare. After you explain what real time captioning is, and how important it is to your being able to understand the speaker, their next question is, “Where can I find a CART reporter?”

Don’t let this question throw you. Direct them to the National Court Reporters Association (NCRA) website and let them pick the reporter of their choice.

There are two ways to do this (and they give somewhat different results, so you may want to try both ways).

1. Go to the NCRA website. On the left side under “Find,” click on “CART Providers.” On the page that comes up, click on the link in the box on the right that says “Click here to search the CART provider directory.” This will take you to a page listing the states, where you click on the name of your state, and up pops a list of certified CART reporters.

2. Alternately, on the page with the map of the USA, click on the state in which the meeting is to be held.

When the desired state page opens, rather than click on “Retrieve All,” choose qualified CART reporters by choosing “Communications Access Realtime Translation” in the “Refine Your Search” box, then click on submit.

In a few seconds you will have a list of the qualified CART reporters in your state. It’s that simple.

If you want to find CART reporters in Canada or other countries, use the second method and choose your desired country from the box below the map of the USA.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man wrote:

I know this is hard, but can you suggest any particular anti-depressant in place of Clomipramine that possibly wouldn’t increase my tinnitus. I realise I’ve got to have something. I’m afraid I fared badly on the newer drugs such as Prozac, so it looks as though I will have to have keep on the tri-cyclics. I just know the Clomipramine is making it worse, as after 5 to 6 hrs the tinnitus seems to noticeably go down a bit. Similarly when I had to bump up the dose, I noticed an increase in my tinnitus (and it started waking me up too).

Of all the tri-cyclic anti-depressants, Clomipramine is probably the worst in regards to tinnitus (and other ototoxic side effects too). Amitriptyline runs a close second in both regards. A number of people have told me they get “screaming tinnitus” whenever they take Amitriptyline.

The good news is that when you get off either of these two drugs, the tinnitus generally seems to go away.

Tri-cyclics that I would rate “medium” for tinnitus include Amoxapine and Imipramine.

Tri-cyclics that, in my opinion, have the least likelihood of causing tinnitus in the “average” person, or making their existing tinnitus worse, include Desipramine, Dothiepin, Doxepin, Nortriptyline, Protriptyline and Trimipramine.

What I’d suggest is that you and your doctor work together and try these various “least likely” tri-cyclics and see whether they both help your depression, and, at the same time, don’t make your tinnitus worse. Just be aware that even these can all cause tinnitus in some people, but probably not all that often, or as severe, when compared to the others.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A mother wrote:

My 2-year-old daughter really hates wearing her hearing aids. She has been fitted with bilateral hearing aids since she was 3 months old.

We have had many different ear molds made. We have adjusted settings on her hearing aids many times. I have recently taken her to a new audiologist to see if she can help this situation. She turned up her hearing aids to see if this would help her to see the benefit of her hearing aids. This has been a very frustrating experience since she was 7 months old and learned to pull them out. I have tried many measures to make her wear her hearing aids including setting time limits where she has to wear them, putting her in time out when she takes them out, rewarding her with praise when she has worn them for an extended period of time, etc. I do well to get her to wear them two hours a day. She still gets upset when I get her hearing aids out and make her wear them, and often when I leave the room she pulls them out. She has group speech therapy with 2 other children that have a hearing loss similar to hers and their parents don’t have this problem.

She has seen 2 audiologists that specialize in pediatrics and both of them I think are at a loss of what to do. She does perform better with her hearing aids on in the sound booth than when they are off.

I am her parent and I know that hearing aids are extremely important but I don’t have to wear them and I am afraid they are hurting her. I do not know what they feel like on my daughter’s ears, and she is not old enough to tell me why she does not like them. I feel as if everyone thinks I am being ridiculous and a negligent parent by not forcing her to wear them every waking hour. I would love for her to wear them all of the time and I get so excited if we have a few good days where she wears them for 5 to 6 hours. There is nothing more that I want than for my child to hear more clearly but I don’t want her to be miserable either. I don’t think that it is fair just because she is a child and I am an adult that I spank her, put her in timeout, act angry at her, etc. if she takes her hearing aids out. Do you have any insight into all of this.

I hear you. You are caught between the professionals that say she must wear her hearing aids all the time, and your daughter who much of the time hates wearing them and thus yanks them out. The professionals are theoretically correct, but your daughter is taking a practical approach as I’ll explain later.

In your letter, you reveal several clues as to what the problem really is, and thus the solution to all of this. Let me explain.

At the outset, you need to determine whether your daughter’s refusal to wear her hearing aids is an act of rebellion (defying your authority as a parent as many two-year-olds do), or if there is some other cause.

I do not believe your daughter is rebelling against you. Here’s why.

1. Punishments aren’t working. Neither are rewards. When the pain exceeds the gain, the bad behavior stops. This is not happening. Neither rewards nor punishments are working. To me, this indicates that there is a fundamental problem that needs correcting, so you need to look further.

2. She doesn’t hate her hearing aids as such, in fact, she is quite proud of them. You write, “I don’t feel that she feels different with her hearing aids in. In fact she is quite proud (because they are pink) and she wants to show them to people when she has them in.” Also, she has classmates with hearing aids too so doesn’t feel different. So it is not “wearing” the hearing aids themselves that is the problem, it is something about wearing them.

3. She reacts the same way each time you get her hearing aids out. You write, “She still gets upset when I get her hearing aids out and make her wear them, and often when I leave the room she pulls them out.” Some people would have you believe that she just needs to get “used” to wearing her hearing aids. You’ve been doing this for well over a year, and if this was the problem it would have ended long since.

Thus, I don’t believe she is rebelling either against the hearing aids or your authority, but is reacting to the pain they are causing her. All her actions are consistent with this.

In fact, you are questioning this yourself. You write, “Many times I have questioned whether the hearing aids were hurting her. It has been very difficult for me as a parent to force my child to wear them when I question if these things are painful to her. ” To your credit you have replaced her ear molds several times thinking that it was the ear molds that are hurting her. In addition, you have had her hearing aids adjusted numerous times, all to no avail.

The audiologists don’t seem to have a clue what to do. One even turned up her hearing aides “to see if this would help her to see the benefit of her hearing aides,” and I bet just the opposite happened. She is now even more insistent on not wearing them.

I think the real problem is that her hearing aids are not adjusted properly and are allowing some, or all, sounds to be amplified to the point where she feels pain.

This becomes clear when you write: “We went to a baseball game and were standing in line for the concession stand, it was very noisy and in a confined area. She immediately became upset and within 30 seconds she was pulling her hearing aides out. She can’t stand them in any noisy environments–restaurants and WalMart, etc. She also lives in a very lively house. She has a four year old brother with whom she loves to rough-house and play loud games. She also has some difficulties with loud noises such as the hair dryer even without her hearing aids in.”

You need to understand that there are two kinds of “sounds being too loud.” The first one is the one everyone is familiar with–typical noisy situations can get so loud that the sounds eventually become painful. Any audiologist worth her salt knows this, and sets the hearing aids so that they won’t amplify above this level. Thus after a person gets used to wearing hearing aids, and their brain gets used to hearing louder sounds again, this is not a problem.

However, there is another kind of “loudness” that few people know about, and few audiologists really understand. It goes by the fancy name of recruitment. With recruitment, even normal, everyday sounds can be perceived as so loud that they are painful.

I believe this is your daughter’s problem. When she perceives sounds as painful, she yanks her hearing aids out. Since she can’t tell you this is happening, she does the only thing she can do to stop the pain.

Recruitment accompanies hearing loss. If you have a sensorineural hearing loss, you will have recruitment to some degree or other. Your daughter seems to have a severe case, just like I have. That is why I understand what she is going through. To learn more about recruitment, read my article called “Recruitment.”

Louder sounds recruit. So can softer sounds. For example, just putting a glass on the table makes a little “thunk” sound–but that particular sound blows the top of my head off (figuratively of course) because, to me, that sound is excruciatingly loud. So are dogs barking and many other sounds.

It’s hard to believe how much these sounds can hurt unless you have experienced recruitment for yourself. If you observe your daughter, you’ll likely notice she yanks her hearing aids off as the sound level increases or certain sounds are present.

As you have discovered, some audiologists do not have a clue how to really adjust hearing aids to fit a person. Many just use the manufacturer’s standard algorithm and fit according to that. This does not work if you have recruitment!

For 50 years I wore hearing aids that could not effectively compensate for my recruitment. Thus whenever certain sounds were around, I yanked them out–for 50 years. Recently, I got hearing aids that can be set to control most of my recruitment. Now I finally can wear my hearing aids under most listening conditions! It’s wonderful!

If your daughter’s hearing aids are not adjusted properly to account for her recruitment, no wonder she can’t stand them and yanks them out. You should be able to tell if sounds are recruiting for her. If a sound that is not too loud to your ears causes her to startle, blink or jump, that sound is recruiting and hurting her.

You mentioned that one audiologist turned up your daughter’s hearing aids to see if this would help her to see the benefit of her hearing aides. I cringed when I read that because this is the wrong thing to do. Sounds are already too loud for her to stand (except in quiet settings) and turning them up makes it even worse! This just exacerbates her recruitment problem.

The solution to recruitment is to set the compression on her hearing aids such that no sounds can ever exceed the recruiting level, whatever that level is.

Her audiologist needs to test for recruitment at each standard test frequency, and then set the compression appropriately in those channels that contain any recruiting frequencies.

Another point. Do her hearing aids have automatic volume controls, manual volume controls or automatic volume controls with manual overrides?

You should never have automatic volume controls unless you also have manual overrides–especially for those with recruitment! If you can control the volume manually, then you just turn it down in noisy situations. It’s that simple. This will go a long ways in controlling recruitment in many, but not all, situations.

To sum this all up, until you get your daughter’s hearing aids properly adjusted for her, don’t make her wear them in any except quiet situations. You might be surprised to know that many adults dump their hearing aids in dresser drawers and don’t wear them because of this very same unresolved recruitment problem, and they can say that their hearing aids are hurting them.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A daughter wrote:

I am very concerned for my 78-year old mother. She was prescribed Diclofenac for 15 days, then complained of severe tinnitus on Day 16, and was overcome by a severe attack of vertigo on Day 17, lasting 4 days. When she could finally walk (with a great deal of help), the Dr. noted severe hearing loss in her right ear. An MRI did not indicate a tumor or any sign of stroke.

Now, 9 weeks later, she no longer complains of dizziness and her gait is better, but she is very fatigued and nauseous to the point of vomiting 2 to 3 times a week. Of most concern is her mental confusion and short term memory problems, which have only become apparent since the vertigo attack. Can all of this be due to the Diclofenac?

Drugs can, and do, cause a number of unwanted side effects such as your mother is experiencing that can flip her world upside down in an instant.

Diclofenac, one of the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, is definitely ototoxic to some people and can cause hearing loss, tinnitus, dizziness, vertigo and ear pain. Unfortunately, it seems your mom got 4 out of 5. In addition, she has memory loss, mental confusion, vomiting and fatigue. Not nice at all.

The Diclofenac apparently damaged both her cochlear (hearing) system causing the hearing loss and tinnitus, and her vestibular (balance) system causing the dizziness, vertigo and other weird side effects.

Let me explain what likely happened to her balance system as that seems to be giving her the most problems at this time.

Your balance system comprises three entirely different systems that your brain uses to keep you erect. These are the balance parts of your inner ears (vestibular system), your eyes, and your proprioceptive system (pressure sensors in your legs and feet). If all three systems send the same (or complementary) balance information to your brain, all is well. However, if one system suddenly begins sending “garbage,” this immediately confuses your brain and typically vertigo (a spinning sensation) and vomiting is the result.

After some weeks, your brain learns to largely ignore the bad balance signals. When it does that, the vertigo typically goes away. At this point, you might think your balance system is recovering, but not so. It is still just as damaged. However, your brain is learning how to work around this damage.

Few people realize that damage to your vestibular system can also result in the problems your mom is now experiencing–namely short term memory problems, mental confusion and fatigue. Here’s how these relate to your balance system.

Keeping your balance is largely a subconscious activity. You don’t have to consciously think about varying the pressure on your toes to keep yourself from falling over. The subconscious parts of your brain automatically take care of this for you. However, when your vestibular system is damaged, the subconscious balance system no longer works properly. In fact, often you have to consciously work to maintain your balance.

When you do this, you use the conscious parts of your brain that you normally use for thinking and memory functions. So, instead of being used exclusively for thinking and memory functions, the conscious parts of your brain are now busy helping you maintain your balance. As a result, your conscious brain doesn’t have enough “brain power” left over to properly do its real job. The result is that your short term memory becomes erratic, and you become confused because you can’t remember instructions, or even what someone was just talking about.

In addition, all this extra conscious effort to maintain your balance is tiring. Hence the fatigue. Furthermore, because of the hearing loss, your brain now has to work much harder in order to understand speech–and this too is very tiring.

These are just a few of the many different effects that damaging your balance system can have on your body. For a more in-depth overview of the many ototoxic side effects of drugs, see Chapter 3 in “Ototoxic Drugs Exposed.”

Few people realize just how far-reaching the effects of drugs can be on our bodies. If they did, they wouldn’t be so quick to take drugs for every little ailment, but save drugs for life-threatening conditions. Learn about drugs before you take them. You don’t have to let drugs flip your world upside down.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady asked:

What is a reverse-slope hearing loss? I have never heard of this terminology for hearing loss, Would you please enlighten me?

Sure thing. Hearing losses go by some strange names such as cookie-bite loss, ski-slope loss, reverse-slope loss, etc. These names come from the shape of the hearing loss when it is plotted on an audiogram.

The most common is the ski-slope hearing loss. The ski-slope loss is where you have reasonably good hearing in the low frequencies (shown on the left side of the audiogram), but you don’t hear much at all in the high frequencies (shown on the right side of the audiogram). The audiogram thus looks much like a ski hill sloping down to the right.

A reverse slope loss, as its name implies, is just the opposite. Hearing loss is mostly in the low frequencies, with little or no loss in the high frequencies. Thus a reverse-slope loss slopes up to the right. Reverse-slope losses–especially the extreme version I have, are very rare.

If you want to learn more about the strange names associated with the various kinds of hearing losses, and see the shapes they form on audiograms, read my short, illustrated article “Kinds of Hearing Losses.”

If you want to learn more about the rare reverse-slope hearing loss and just how weird hearing is with this kind of loss, read my articles (long or abridged) entitled “The Bizarre World of Extreme Reverse-Slope Hearing Loss that is now posted to the HearingLossHelp website.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man wrote:

My doctor is considering giving me low-dose Doxycycline to treat my ocular rosacea. Can you tell me how safe this drug might be for someone with a moderate sensorineural hearing loss?

I was given tetracycline as a child (which badly discolored my permanent teeth) and took it again for a number of years for acne as a teenager. After learning about ototoxic drugs, I’ve wondered if the Tetracycline might have contributed to my hearing loss. Although the Tetracycline drugs are promoted as relatively safe, I do have concerns about using Doxycycline. Is there any information about this drug, in regard to ototoxicity?

Information on the ototoxicity of many drugs is quite sketchy. Drugs in the Tetracycline family are no exception. Here is what I can tell you about them.

The Tetracycline family of antibiotics includes drugs such as Tetracycline, Chlortetracycline, Doxycycline and Minocycline to name some of the more common ones.

Often drugs in the same family have much the same ototoxic properties. Thus, if Tetracycline did indeed damage your ears, you could expect more damage from Doxycycline.

In order to determine whether there might be a connection between your taking Tetracycline and your hearing loss, you need to think back and see whether there is any correlation in time between when you took the Tetracycline and the appearance of your hearing loss. If your hearing loss occurred shortly after you first took the Tetracycline, and got worse after the second bout, then there would seem to be a strong cause and effect relationship. However, if you did not get a hearing loss until many years later, I would doubt that the Tetracycline caused it.

Although Tetracycline and Doxycycline are not listed in the Physicians’ Desk Reference (PDR) as causing hearing loss, Minocycline is. However, we get a different story when looking through the Canadian equivalent–the Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties (CPS). There we find Tetracycline, but not Doxycycline or Minocycline listed as causing hearing loss.

From that, it would appear that hearing loss is not a big problem with the drugs in the Tetracycline family. As you have already noted, the Tetracycline family is generally not thought to be all that ototoxic–at least to most people. However, there are a number of exceptions. Some people do indeed suffer from hearing loss after taking one of the Tetracyclines. I have had several people contact me in this regard.

For example, one man had a severe ototoxic reaction to Tetracycline that left him with a severe/profound hearing loss in both ears. Another man took Chlortetracycline for a strep throat that left him with a permanent hearing loss. Yet another man took Doxycycline for a urinary tract infection and lost much of his hearing as a result. Still another man took Doxycycline for 10 days to treat his cold. He reported, “the hearing in my already-impaired right ear suddenly reduced to virtually zero and remains there.”

Thus, it is wise for you to be wary, especially since you already have a hearing loss. This is because people with hearing losses are even more susceptible to the ravages of ototoxic drugs than those with normal hearing.

Will the Doxycycline affect your hearing? I don’t think anyone knows for sure. Thus, you are going to have to decide for yourself, based on your earlier history with Tetracycline, whether you want to risk taking the Doxycycline and having to put up with any resulting ototoxic side effects or not. At least you now know what you are dealing with.

If you choose not to risk it, you might want to investigate other drugs that are not known to be ototoxic, or look at other options such as herbal remedies.

For more information on ototoxic drugs in general read our various articles on ototoxic drugs.

For complete information and individual listings on the known ototoxic drugs and chemicals, see our book, “Ototoxic Drugs Exposed.”