The first ENT I visited when my H started in 2013 "ruled out" inner ear damage directly, based on my hearing test. I didn't know as much about H then as I know now sadly, so I didn't really question him. If you look at tinnitus.org (the official TRT page by Jonathan Hazel) you'll see that "no inner ear damage" is the general consensus among the "TRT camp". This is based only on Hazel's and Jastreboff's gut feelings. There is no hard science behind their claims, yet ENTs, Audiologists and other clinican's has followed these ideas without question for a long time now. So damage is actually ruled out for many of us when we visit doctors.
http://tinnitus.org/hyperacusis-etc/
And ''no middle ear damage'' is another of Jastreboff's and Hazell's dogmas. And yet if their patients went to Sismanis instead of them, they'd get diagnosed with possible myoclonus instead of ''hyperacusis'' and ''misophonia''. In fact chat-h went through an entire gaslighting operation by ignoring astrid's and lib's hypotheses and experiences and instead just parroting factoids made up by ''Jastreboff and his mates'', as astrid would say. And @linearb there are plenty of examples of patients getting screwed over by useless audiometries and MRIs from the clueless mainstream of ENT and TRT believing monkeys.