Audiometry — Does Tinnitus Create Chicken or the Egg Situation in Hearing Test?

[Tintin@BayArea]

Tinnitus since 02/2017 - just had my Audiometry test. The Audiologist said I have normal hearing in both ears from low to 4kHz (telephone speech) with a steep drop from 4 kHz to 8 Khz. He said this is the cause of my Tinnitus ... not being able to hear the high frequencies. That I must have had some ear damage a long time ago and that is now manifesting itself as Tinnitus. He also said this loss has nothing to do with my age (64).

First of all while he was measuring my hearing, the Tinnitus background chirping was at about half strength, so this did make it difficult to hear some of the sounds. Seemed like a chicken or the egg situation here ... was Tinnitus making it hard to hear those frequencies or is Tinnitus the result of not being able to hear those frequencies?

How does one get a good measurement when there is already Tinnitus? Also the audiologist didn't do any test to identify the Tinnitus frequency like some others have mentioned here. Did he miss the test or do I have to ask for this especially?

Also I read that if both ears have equal hearing loss, then it is likely there is damage due to taking pharceuticals of some kind (Ototoxic drugs). Anyone else can confirm this? I had taken Malarone as a malaria prevention drug in January for two weeks.

 

[Jkph75]

Hearing loss causes tinnitus. They won't measure your tinnitus unless you are in TRT. My tinnitus is usually much louder than any loss that I have. I'm not sure it's always related.