Inner ear barotrauma

[Barney1]

The most important sentence in medicine is "there is a bell curve for everything"


Yup. Hang in there, hopefully things will improve soon. You may never get a real "answer" about what happened. Imaging almost never shows a bony capsule defect associated with IEBT, and even at surgery, the diagnosis of PLF is often questionable. So we do what we can...

Hello, I thought I would post and update. I went for a follow up consultation with the ENT. He said it was unlikely that the dive caused the sudden hearing loss, due to the lack of contributing symptoms (no loss of balance) and the late onset of the actual hearing loss. He thought it was almost certainly nerve related and that the steroid dose helped. But he couldn’t be sure. He was an ear surgeon and told me that he had experience with hyperbaric medicine in his elective years. So, I guess that is that. A coincidence. Given that I have recovered all of my hearing back he didn’t think the cause lay in the actual cochlea. He has advised that I can continue to div, which is great.
Thanks again to your self and Duke. It helped a little to have someone to soundboard while going through it.
The experience has definitely made me more aware of the dangers to the ears when diving, so there is that.
Thanks again.

Cheers.

 

[Angelo Farina]

Hello, I thought I would post and update. I went for a follow up consultation with the ENT. He said it was unlikely that the dive caused the sudden hearing loss, due to the lack of contributing symptoms (no loss of balance) and the late onset of the actual hearing loss. He thought it was almost certainly nerve related and that the steroid dose helped. But he couldn’t be sure. He was an ear surgeon and told me that he had experience with hyperbaric medicine in his elective years. So, I guess that is that. A coincidence. Given that I have recovered all of my hearing back he didn’t think the cause lay in the actual cochlea. He has advised that I can continue to div, which is great.
Thanks again to your self and Duke. It helped a little to have someone to soundboard while going through it.
The experience has definitely made me more aware of the dangers to the ears when diving, so there is that.
Thanks again.

Cheers.

These are good news.
As it appears that you will come back to diving, indeed, and that you had to "force equalisation", I warmly suggest that you work about improving your equalisation techniques. Get rid of the crap and dangerous Valsalva method, there are better ones.
For shallow free diving, most instructors suggest the Frenzel manouvre. For deep free diving, the Frenzel-Fattah ("mouthfill") is better.
In both cases you are not using your lungs and these methods are more gentle and safe for your ears.
You can research on them in the Internet, you can have a free diving instructor teaching them to you, or you can contact DAN and see if there are any Equaleasy courses organised in your area.
A colleague of me at work always had problems equalising, got a couple of middle-ear barothraumas, and finally solved all his problems with this course:

DAN Europe - EqualEasy - course - DAN Europe - EqualEasy - course

nome:EqualEasy - Equalisation Awarenessabstract:At present, this content is only available in Italian language. The DAN Equalisation Awareness course is the training course focusing on...

www.daneurope.org

 

[Duke Dive Medicine]

Hello, I thought I would post and update. I went for a follow up consultation with the ENT. He said it was unlikely that the dive caused the sudden hearing loss, due to the lack of contributing symptoms (no loss of balance) and the late onset of the actual hearing loss. He thought it was almost certainly nerve related and that the steroid dose helped. But he couldn’t be sure. He was an ear surgeon and told me that he had experience with hyperbaric medicine in his elective years. So, I guess that is that. A coincidence. Given that I have recovered all of my hearing back he didn’t think the cause lay in the actual cochlea. He has advised that I can continue to div, which is great.
Thanks again to your self and Duke. It helped a little to have someone to soundboard while going through it.
The experience has definitely made me more aware of the dangers to the ears when diving, so there is that.
Thanks again.

Cheers.

Glad to hear that you're fully recovered and can return to diving. Please do be careful equalizing in the future! Start before you leave the surface and equalize when descending before it feels like you need to. There are a lot of techniques out there. Valsalva is effective but can cause damage if done forcefully.

Best regards,
DDM

 

[doctormike]

Great to hear! Thanks for the follow up..