That's what I thought when I didn't try to get my ENT to prescribe the rest of the course of prednisone for me. However, later on, I learned that steroids can be used regardless of the origin of T (see the third comment on:
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...dexamethasone-others-oral-and-injections.348/
Also, check out
http://advancedotology.org/sayilar/84/buyuk/4-Comparison of Long-Term Outcome.pdf
People can do whatever they want, but I remain deeply skeptical. The first link is an anecdotal report of something one doctor may have said in Germany, and the second is talking about transtympanic injection of a different drug which can't really be compared to oral dosing. Also, transtympanic dosing has been tried over and over for decades, and does not have a lot of documented good outcomes behind it. All of these drugs are very old and relatively common, and I think it's unlikely that there's some magic benefit that's somehow missing from the decent size stash of data we've got.
I have researched this as extensively as possible out of boredom a couple times, read every relevant abstract on pubmed, and even chased down the fulltext PDFs of a few papers that looked interesting. Based on that I'm convinced that there is no demonstrated utility in humans taking oral steroids after acoustic trauma. IIRC, there were a few studies with relatively small sample sizes which showed a small positive benefit, and a couple other papers which showed none. Based on that, if steroids were entirely benign, then sure, why not, crapshoot but who cares -- but in fact they're relatively strong drugs, prone to create pretty extreme mood swings in a good number of people, and in rare cases have much more severe and long term side effects (
http://www.mdedge.com/currentpsychi...costeroid-induced-mania-prepare-unpredictable,
http://www.the-rheumatologist.org/article/when-steroids-cause-psychosis/,
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1440-1819.2011.02260.x/full,
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/crim/2011/564521/)
Actual psychotic breaks, let alone homicide, appear to be rare, but ~1/5th of people end up with some kind of psychiatric side effects -- and given the little we know about the possible implications of extra stress and anxiety during tinnitus onset, this seems pretty dubious to me.
I am passionate on this issue only because prednisone gets tossed around on here like it's some kind of standard treatment for noise trauma, and it's not, and the reason that it's not is a lack of efficiency data combined with the risk profile. You can likely find a doctor who will throw a prednisone script at you if you're aggressive enough about it, but that doesn't make it a good idea.
Just my .02, I'm not a doctor and think people should basically take whatever drugs they want. But, the OP here didn't have a gun go off next to their head, someone slammed a door. Unless you live in the woods like I do, if you go popping steroids every time a balloon pops or someone slams a door, it's definitely going to catch up to you sooner or later.
Member
