I would say this is the current expectation, yeah. It's a darn shame that one shot can't get all the gel to fill up the cochlea, but evolution seemed to think it was a good idea to lock that puppy away in your head.
I don't see any possibility for tinnitus to result from restoring frequencies. I think I get what you mean: there will be a disparity in your ears as your left can now hear better than your right.
I don't know this with certainty, and I don't even know if it is understood for uncertain, but I will assume that tinnitus develops independent of both ears. Tinnitus resulting in hearing loss from your right ear will be because that right ear is deficient and not because your left ear is superior. This is my perspective as a layman, but I also have not yet read anything that indicates otherwise.
Honestly, the moral of the story is to get both of your ears treated if you have bilateral tinnitus from sensorineural hearing loss.
Getting a single shot with enough FX-322 to penetrate deeper into the cochlea may be a matter of reformulating their delivery gel. Not really a difficult problem to solve, just won't be ready for the Phase 1 product. I'm sure this is in the pipeline at Frequency Therapeutics.
If the tinnitus is a symptom of SNHL, in my own experience and others that have discussed it here, it can develop significantly differently in either ear. This would explain people who have one-sided tinnitus following an acoustic trauma that occurred either to their left or right (firecracker, gun shot, etc).
Based on what we've seen from the Phase 1/2, I suspect that the damaged cells restored by FX-322 in the cochlea are "like-new" in terms of performance and durability; but those worn cells that aren't touched by the drug will retain the aged state and eventually be fully worn out sooner than the treated ones. There also may be cases where there are areas where a mixture of "new" cells and "worn original" cells exist that may wear a little more quickly, and redosing is needed to regenerate those more worn cells a few years later.
I expect that over the long term, patients will need to return for re-dosing as those original, worn and untreated cells die off and need regenerated.
This is why this drug shouldn't be seen as a cure for hearing loss or tinnitus. In reality, it's like a "reset button" for hearing cells.
It's highly likely that someone will get treated with the drug, their hearing and tinnitus will improve in the damaged frequencies, and then something like an airbag will cause newer damage to worn cells lower in the cochlea, causing new hearing loss and tinnitus.
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