Clark Fletcher
Contributor
Obviously I don't know what happened in your particular case. I do feel obligated to point out that (with one unlikely exception) an outer ear infection ("swimmer's ear") does not extend to the inner ear, compromise blood flow to the cochlea, or cause a permanent and total loss of hearing. The exception is something called malignant otitis externa, which is a disease occasionally seen in elderly diabetics where infections spreads to the bone of the skull base and can affect the inner ear. Not a typical complication of swimmer's ear.
Can you share more about your case?
Hey @doctormike. I'd be happy to share as much as I can recall from the injury. First, the ear infection was not diving related. It was about five or six years ago, before I started back diving again. I just thought I should stress the importance of getting checked at the first sign of trouble with your ears.
As I mentioned, I went to bed one evening feeling fine (i.e. no pain or discomfort in my ears). When I woke up the next morning, I was completely deaf in my right ear. I scheduled an appointment with my regular physician and was diagnosed with an ear infection and was told that the ear drum was not perforated. My physician prescribed a treatment with antibiotics which cleared up the infection. However, my hearing never improved. During that entire time, I never experienced any pain in my ear.
Subsequently, I scheduled an appointment with an ENT Physician who checked me, ran a few tests, and declared that my auditory nerve had been damaged. I'm not sure exactly how he determined that. From there I think much of it was speculation as to exactly what caused the damage but, he surmised that swelling in my ear had cut of blood flow to the auditory nerve resulting in permanent damage to the nerve. Honestly, I don't remember if he specifically mentioned where in the auditory canal the swelling might have occurred. He prescribed a steroid treatment hoping that it may result in some healing of the auditory nerve. However, he was not optimistic that it would help as it was now several weeks after the hearing loss occurred. Apparently, steroid treatments are typically only successful if they are administered within the first week of the hearing loss. He did, as a precautionary measure, schedule me for a CT of the head. He told me that sometimes a tumor on the auditory nerve can result in a sudden loss of hearing as I had experienced. I knew that to be true because a friend of mine's mom had experienced exactly that. The CT showed no tumor.
Again, all of that started about five years ago. To date, there has been no overall improvement in my hearing. From time-to-time I can detect a faint buzzing in my right ear. For example, if I listen to music with earphones and remove the earphone from my GOOD ear, I can detect a buzzing in the bad ear. Other times I can do the same thing and there's no sound at all.
That's about all I can remember. If you have any questions, let me know.