Fullness Feeling in the Ear and Tinnitus?

[Sound Wave]

Hello Dr Nagler. First, I truly appreciate your effort to help us here. Now to the question - why many people with tinnitus feel fullness in the ear? This puzzles me, because at least my fullness feels 'very physical', i.e. there is something abnormal 'physically / mechanically' somewhere in my ear, even though ENTs have found nothing abnormal. The fullness feeling was very strong in the beginning when I got T and now it goes on and off quite randomly.

 

[Dr. Nagler]

Hello Dr Nagler. First, I truly appreciate your effort to help us here.

Thanks for the kind words.

Now to the question - why many people with tinnitus feel fullness in the ear? This puzzles me, because at least my fullness feels 'very physical', i.e. there is something abnormal 'physically / mechanically' somewhere in my ear, even though ENTs have found nothing abnormal. The fullness feeling was very strong in the beginning when I got T and now it goes on and off quite randomly.

The list of causes for the intermittent sensation of aural fullness is long and best left to folks who know more than I, but the fact that your ENTs "have found nothing abnormal" means that whatever is causing the fullness is of no clinical consequence. The reason that people with tinnitus feel fullness more than others points to the fact that tinnitus sufferers tend to be aware of head and neck phenomena more than others. (Who can blame them?) So the intermittent fullness may have been there all along "under the radar" until the onset of tinnitus.

Hope this clarifies more than confuses.

Dr. Stephen Nagler