Per the researcher I corresponded with (and I have since spent a lot of time reading papers on this..."flat epithelia cochlea" on PubMed, Google Scholar and PubMed turns up a lot if you want a place to start), once you have lost all of your IHCs, and OHCs in a particular area of your cochlea, the support cells die and are replaced with flat epithelia. This seems to only happen with *total* losses and your audiogram will reflect that as a greater than 90 dB loss (from anything but the sub 250 Hz tones, where a more moderate audiogram change may reflect full loss).Sorry I know you know much about this so I really would like your opinion on this, but from what I understand to be really sure that you only have flat epithelia left you need profound losses in all or a lot of frequencies on your audiogram?
If hearing loss isn't your main problem and tinnitus is, it only matters where your tinnitus is. I.e. if you have profound loss at 16000 Hz but then you have a moderate notch at 8000 Hz but your tinnitus is at 8000 Hz, then that's what is relevant for you.