Seeking the Right Ear Doctor to Treat Your Tinnitus



Tinnitus can be inconveniencing. Hearing a continuous sound in your ears that shouldn’t be there is really unsettling and might cause you to lose your balance hence the need to see an ear doctor.

While some people might regard tinnitus as just an inconvenience and nothing more, it could, in reality, be a forewarning about an impending permanent hearing loss. It is therefore imperative that you find the right ear doctor to check you out.

To select the right doctor, you need to know the proper medical procedure. You should also have an idea about how their fields of specialization relate to treating tinnitus as a prelude to hearing loss.

General Practitioners

Generally, an ear specialist would require that you first see a general practitioner. This is only as a matter of procedure. General practitioners have no specialized training in treating tinnitus syndromes that relates to ear problems.

These practitioners are usually family doctors and can only take care of your outer ear and ear canals. If after examination, your family doctor then concludes that the problem isn’t arising from any of the areas he specializes on, he then refers you to an ear specialist.

Otolaryngologist

This is the official medical title that doctors who specialize in the trifecta treatment – eyes, nose, and throat – are known for. Due to the difficulty in pronouncing the title, they are commonly referred to as ENT doctors, where ENT are initial for their areas of specialization – Ears, Nose, and Mouth – respectively.

These doctors are specialist in matters relating to the ear and are best suited to handle any tinnitus syndrome that affects the middle ear up to the inner parts. Cases of otosclerosis and cholesteatomas are the most common issues relating to treating tinnitus that ENT doctors take care of.

Otosclerosis is a cause of tinnitus wherein the tiny spike-like bones in the middle ear area have grown hard and inflexible, thus losing its ability to respond normally to the sound waves. And Cholesteatomas are ear tumors found in the middle ears.

There are cases when ENT doctor is unable to find the cause of tinnitus as it might not be in his field of expertise. No need to be alarmed though as there are still ENT doctors who went further into the field of ear specialization.

Otologists or Neurotologists

These set of doctors after completing their courses as ENT specialist and have become certified Otolaryngologist, went on further to specialize on just the ears. Otology is the branch of medicine classified as biomedicine, and it deals with the study and treatment of ear diseases, diagnosis, and treatment of the ears about its physiology, anatomical structures, and pathological occurrences.

These are the same doctors that not only treat tinnitus but also work on developing treatment methods for it.

Now that you are fairly acquainted with these doctors and their area of specialization, you should now know what your best course of action would be and who would be the right ear doctor for you.