After recently joining this forum, and reading through many of the messages that have been posted, I am inclined to believe that there may be something not well known that may help some people. This is why I am posting this message, in hopes of possibly helping someone that may have recently experienced sudden hearing loss in one of their ears (due to pressure exerted by an AN). I have had two cases in about a 1.5 year period where I suddenly loss my hearing in my left ear. In both cases, my hearing was perfectly fine and quickly degraded over about a 3 day period to the point where I could no longer hear on the left side.
Fortunately, the first time this happened, my ENT had a suspicion about the hearing loss and quickly put me on a steroid called Prednisone. After about 4 days of taking the steroid, my hearing graduallly began to come back, and eventually it was back to 100%. In the second case, however, although I my experience was very similar to the first case a year and a half earlier, my hearing came back to about 90-95%. It seems that the second time, I lost some of my high frequencies. However, I still have most of my hearing and I can hear most things just fine.
Apparently, the AN that I have was getting inflamed just enough to cut some of the blood supply to my inner ear structures, which was resulting in the hearing loss. Since Prednisone is commonly used as an anti-inflammatory remedy, it alleviated the pressure and allowed my hearing to be restored.
I cannot really explain the 1.5 year absence of the hearing loss between my two incidents of hearing loss, but I do know that in both cases of nearly total hearing loss, Prednisone did help me restore my hearing. My understanding is that if I had not treated the condition in a timely manner (with the Prednisone), extended blood supply problems to the inner ear structures may have resulted in permanent total hearing loss. Unfortunately, from reading many of the posts in this forum, I am not sure if many know of Prednisone as a possible treatment for sudden hearing loss, if you catch it early enough to try to preserve some amount of hearing. Of course, there are some side effects, and that should be weighed against the loss of hearing before use.
I hope this information possibly helps some who still may have a chance of restoring a recent hearing loss that they may have experienced.
Thanks,
Paul